UPDATE (see the bottom of the post)
So the country which took the money of the Nazi’s money in WWII and still shelters money for all many of people and organizations which serve only an ill purpose to humanity does this?
Thirty minutes after the referendum finished at midday, Swiss television reported: “The initiative would appear to be accepted. There is a positive trend. It’s a huge surprise.”
According to the respected gfs.bern polling institute an estimated 59 per cent of voters backed the ban. A majority of cantons were also in support of the initiative.
“A majority have voted for a nationwide ban on the construction of minarets,” said the institute’s director Claude Longchamp, speaking on Swiss Radio DRS.
For the Swiss constitution to be changed, the majority of the electorate and a majority of the cantons are required to vote ‘yes’.
A survey two weeks ago showed 53 per cent said they would reject it. Both the government and parliament had rejected the initiative.
Commentators had said the country risked international pariah status and a backlash across the Muslim world if a ’yes’ vote was achieved.
If the exit polls prove correct it will be a huge shock and Switzerland risks international pariah status and a backlash across the Muslim world.
Sunday’s vote was forced by members of the far-right Swiss People’s party (SVP) which has provoked a national debate over immigration with powerful billboard images.
Oh, and a nifty little campaign poster from a previous election:
For a Greater Security
See here as well.
November 29th, 2009 7:11 pm
Although I know that I will come in for criticism, however, I do feel it is prudent to reflect on reciprocal Christian freedoms in Islamic nations.
I feel it should also be noted that it’s only minarets that are now no longer allowed, it seems that mosques are still o.k.
November 29th, 2009 8:00 pm
Racist. Orientalism. Hatemongering.
Those words seem to fit this policy.
November 29th, 2009 9:56 pm
Sigh …
Xenophobia is so ugly.
November 30th, 2009 4:58 am
Islam is not a race and so it cannot be racist or Xenophobic.
Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey has said that “the minarets are our bayonets”.
November 30th, 2009 9:07 am
Courtesy of dictionary.com:
Xenophobia: –noun
an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange.
“that which is foreign or strange” doesn’t have to be technically a race. It could be anything. including a religion, or even just an architecture style. I think that the racism charge is based more on the “boot out the black sheep” posters … xenophobia applies to all of it. I stand by it as the perfect word for the situation.
November 30th, 2009 9:21 am
We will have to agree to disagree, as I don’t believe that Minartes and mosques are viewed as foreign or strange, so much as potentially dangerous. Minarets are viewed as examples of Islamic power in the eyes of some Muslims.
I don’t see the problem with protecting a countries heritage and culture.
All minority groups (and I include myself, if I were to live in a non-English country) have to earn the respect of the host nation and if they do not do so, then they can not expect to have everything that they demand. Islamic radicals have caused this type of peoblem and it is for their own community to reign them in frankly.
This was not a ban forbidding the construction of mosques, nor was it a ban on Muslims being able to conduct their religion, unlike for Christianity in many Islamic nations.
funding for large mosques often does not come from Muslim communities but from donations from places like Saudi Arabia.
And remember that Saudi Arabia not only has NO churches or synagogues, it bans the import of bibles, it imprisons people for holding Christian services and sentences people to death for the impossible crime of witchcraft.
This minaret ban, compared to the plans by Saudi Arabia to build ever larger and ever-more impressive mosques beyond its territory is chicken feed compared to many Muslim countries’ behaviour.
Saudi Arabia is run by a tribe of fanatical retrogressive despots who practice a form of Islam that caused its founder to be driven out of Medina for his fanaticism.
But a so-called “moderate” Muslim nation like Malaysia has for the past few years engaging in a policy of destroying Hindu temples, some of which are more than 100 years old as well as Christian churches.
In Malaysia, the main excuses given to deatroy such tmeples is that the bildings did not have planning permission. When you deal with temples that were built more than 40 years before Malaysia had its merdeka (independence), such claims are spurious.
The demolition of such temples is a real example of an attack upon religious freedom, along with the refusal of the Malaysian sharia courts to allow Muslims to leave Islam.
Prince Charles pressured the Qatari* royal family to stop building a building complex “visually” ruining the area of Chelsea Barracks. What is the difference?
Minarets existed to call the faithful to prayer, and thus for many people they do not just represent the scar upon a skyline (as Oriana Fallaci saw them) but potentially a “right” to have calls to prayer made by loudspeakers from these towers. That is their sole practical purpose.
And as has been shown from Oxford and also Sofia in Bulgaria, calls to prayer cause great resentments to non-Muslims who feel that they really have had their neighbourhoods colonised.
This is up to the Swiss, not us.
If they were advocating stopping Muslims from worshipping, or stopping them from building new places of worship, I would join you in condemnation.
As far as I can see, this may irritate Swiss Muslims, and I am sure the most active condemnation will come from Tariq Ramadan’s truly fanatical brother, Hani. Hani Ramadan, who supports the notion of Muslim Brotherhood infiltration by a vanguard followed by a colonisation, openly argues for sharia punishments, including the stoning of women.
Hani Ramadan’s demands for an uncompromising interpretation of Islam has probably, more than any other factor, pushed the Swiss people into fearing the spread of Islam. Hani Ramadan’s open stridency makes Hizb ut-Tahrir seem tolerant.
* Qatar only gave permission in 2006 for the first church to be built in more than a century within its borders.
November 30th, 2009 10:12 am
Well, first of all … if you don’t see the ban as xenophobic, then you don’t know much at all about the SVP.
“unlike for Christianity in many Islamic nations.”
Yes, well, if Muslim countries are xenophobic, that must make it okay, right? You’ll never find me defending Saudi Arabia’s policies. They’re wrong. That doesn’t make Switzerland right.
November 30th, 2009 10:18 am
Here is the problem as I see it – the SVP is a extreme right wing party (not religious right, but more like fascism) which is using different things to secure a, well, a whiter Swiss state. To be honest, I don’t want to see those things in my landscape either, but it is the motivation being used that worries me. Let’s remember how Hitler came to power – and he used Christian Churches to do it.
That is my fear.
November 30th, 2009 12:33 pm
“then you don’t know much at all about the SVP”
This was a democratic vote and it was the people that voted, for this, not a political party and to say that the people were duped by the SVP’s scaremongering posters would be insulting to the people frankly.
Granted, two wrongs do not make a right, however, it is tiresome, to see the western nations bending over backwards for Islam and never receiving reciprocal rights in Islamic nations and people are beginning to recognise this and say ‘enough is enough’ and as someone who watches the depressing news of persecution of Christians within Islamic lands, frankly, I don’t blame them.
December 4th, 2009 11:29 am
[...] Sunday, a ban was passed throughout all cantons, by majority vote, that would disallow minarets to be placed on top of mosques. Where are the fighters of religious freedom on this [...]
November 30th, 2009 12:35 pm
Fair point Polycarp.
November 30th, 2009 12:35 pm
Stuart, I don’t blame the people – yes it was a democratic vote. My worry is the use of it to bring the SVP to power.
November 30th, 2009 12:40 pm
Stuart, I just send you and email.
November 30th, 2009 12:40 pm
Understood and we are seeing the worrying rise of the far right in Europe and they are unifying together as well, which is worrying.
It really is a tightrope at times and the funny thing is that I can often see both sides equally, but I do worry about Europe and Islam, as if things continue as they are currently, Europe is predicted to demographically Muslim within 50 years, due to immigration and contrasting birth rates. I’m not racist, but I do worry when I see how Christians are treated by Islam.
December 1st, 2009 1:31 pm
Stuart,
I’m with you on this, radical Islam will always be a problem to any free society, and certainly Jews and Christians!
December 1st, 2009 1:37 pm
Radical religion of any type will be a problem of any society, but minarets do not equal radical Islam. Further, again, while it is a democratic vote, the motivation of the SVP is worrisome.