Ban on Minarets Passes in Switzerland

A popular referendum in Switzerland that will ban the building of minarets at Islamic mosques has passed. Despite the fact that the measure polled only at 37 percent approval a few days before, the referendum passed by a comfortable 57 percent.

Minarets are the towers that are built around Islamic mosques where the traditional call to prayer is given via megaphone or loud speaker. Muslims are obligated to pray facing Mecca five times a day at sunrise, noon, day, sundown, and evening.

The minaret controversy in Switzerland appears to stem from the unease many Europeans have concerning the influx of Muslims into Europe. There are, for instance, four hundred thousand Muslims in Switzerland alone. Muslims living in Europe tend to be resistant to assimilation, hostile to the somewhat more libertarian societies existing in European countries, and keep to separate communities.

The current War on Terror has certainly not helped with attitudes toward and about Muslims. When the most conspicuous face of Islam is Osama bin Laden to President Amadinjad of Iran, feelings of unease are naturally heightened.

Tensions between Muslims living in Europe and Christian or secular Europeans have occasionally erupted into violence. The Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim for a film he directed called 'Submission', which dealt with the treatment of women in Islam. Riots have occurred in majority Muslim neighborhoods in Paris.

At the same time, advocates of multiculturalism in European countries have pressed for tolerance of European Muslims, even when certain Islamic practices are found to offend, such as honor killings and the application of harsh Sharia law. Clearly the passage of the anti minaret referendum in Switzerland constitutes a kind of backlash to such blandishments.

Part of the problem seems to be an uncertainty of what it means to be a European. Many Europeans have turned away from traditional institutions, such as the Church, and even feel embarrassed at the concept of national pride. The latter may be understandable, since nationalism has tended to cause world wars with a whole host of accompanying atrocities.

On the other hand, a softening of national identity tends to leave a society more vulnerable that usual to outside influences. With falling birth rates coupled with rising Muslim populations, some futurists wonder whether traditional European countries might not become majority Muslim latter this century. The idea that countries such as France or Holland could become Islamic republics, not from conquest, but by sheer demographics coupled by a lack of will to maintain traditional European identity has evolved from fantasy to something that is a real possibility.

Clearly some people in Europe are worried. Hence the ban on minarets.

Oddly enough, the United States seems to be immune to the kind of inter cultural tensions that seem to be festering in Europe. American national identity is not related to ethnic background, religion, or race as European identity is. Americanism is more related to belief in how a society should be organized; democracy, free markets, defense of free expression. Arguments over American identity tend to be about those ideas and not, as in Europe, over race or religion.

Minarets Banned As Swiss Back Far-Right, Tom Bonnett, Sky News, November 29th, 2009