Minaret-Less Mosque – Ban OR the Beginning of a Renaissance By Syed B. Soharwardy

Minaret-Less Mosque – Ban OR the Beginning of a Renaissance

By

Syed B. Soharwardy

www.iscc.ca

 

When I received the news that in Switzerland 57.5 percent of voters and 22 cantons (provinces) out of 26 cantons have voted to ban building of minarets on mosques, I was at a mosque in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.  I am the Lead Imam at the Al Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre. It is also called Al Madinah Masjid (Mosque).  I had just finished the prayer and a member of our congregation gave me the Swiss news.  I smiled and asked the brother to come outside.  When we came out of the mosque, I took him around the mosque and asked, do you see any minarets on this mosque?  He said, “no”. I said, “this place does not even look like a mosque from outside”.  He smiled. He knew what this minaret-less mosque has achieved within five years of its existence that many mosques with minarets could not achieve.

 

Al Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre was established in 2005. It is located in a shopping mall. We purchased two shops and converted them into a mosque. If the sign outside the mosque is removed, no one would even know that this is a place of worship for Muslims.  In less than five years our congregation grew from 27 people to almost 2000 people.  We have more than 200 girls and boys learning Qur’an and Islamic teachings.  In less than five years 23 non-Muslim Calgarians embraced Islam at the Al Madinah Islamic Centre. Every year hundreds of Calgarians; Christians, Jews, Atheists, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and others visit the Al Madinah Centre and take part in the Interfaith Dialogues. 99% of those who attend the interfaith activities at the Al Madinah Centre change their attitude about Islam and Muslims.  Their misconceptions and misunderstandings about Islam are removed. They appreciate that someone has helped them in removing those fears and distrust of Muslims that the media tries to build everyday. In Ramadan, every year for one month, more than 200 Muslims and non-Muslims eat together at the sunset time at the Al Madinah Mosque. 

 

The Interfaith activities at the Al Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre motivated me to walk across Canada, from Halifax to Victoria (6500 KM) as the lead walker of Multifaith Walk Against Violence.  During this seven month long walk I met hundreds of non-Muslim Canadians and changed their opinions against Muslims and Islam.  Did we need a mosque with minarets for this work?   I don’t think so. We did it with a minaret-less mosque and Insha Allah (God willing) we will continue on the path of building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims. 

 

Insha Allah (God willing), in future, we have plans to establish a Food Bank, Women’s Shelter, Temporary Residences for New Immigrants and a School in Calgary.  We have already purchased 5 acres of land for these projects.

 

The issue of banning the minarets in Switzerland is not religious. It is a political issue.  It should be handled politically. In politics, public opinions do count.  It was the public opinion of 57.5% of Swiss voters that brought this ban.  Public opinions do change and I am sure it will change.  I am very thankful that neither the Swiss Muslims nor the worldwide Muslims reacted to this ban the way we reacted to the Danish Cartoons. Instead of taking the path of violence, which is against Islam we must choose the path of education, which is the way of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

 

The most important thing for Swiss Muslims is that the 42.5% Swiss voters were against this ban.  They need to work on the 15% or less voters and help them to see the minaret issue the way 42.5% Swiss voters saw it.  The Swiss Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but the rightist Swiss People’s Party, or S.V.P., and a small religious party created Islamophobia in Switzerland. This can be changed provided that the Swiss Muslims remain loyal to Islam and Switzerland.  The loyalty and sincerity with the country will change the hearts of those Swiss people who were supporting the ban yesterday.

 

Of 150 mosques or prayer rooms in Switzerland, only 4 have minarets, and only 2 more minarets were planned. There are about 400,000 Muslims in a population of some 7.5 million people. Switzerland's Muslim population is among the most moderate, and least foreign, in Europe.   Of the country's 400,000 Muslims, representing less than 5 per cent of the population, the largest group are of European background, with ancestors from the historically Muslim Balkan countries of southeast Europe – in other words, they are as culturally and historically European as any Christian Swiss citizen.

 

The issue of minarets started in 2005 when the Turkish cultural association applied for a construction permit to erect a 6-metre-high minaret on the roof of its Islamic community centre in a small municipality which was opposed by the local community. After appeals and court cases the 6m minaret was constructed in July 2009. This has snowballed in to a controversy and became a political issue with the right-wing parties projecting the minarets as symbols of Islamic militancy.

 

One of the Swiss parliamentarians said,

 

“We don’t have anything against Muslims, But we don’t want minarets. The minaret is a symbol of a political and aggressive Islam; it’s a symbol of Islamic law. The minute you have minarets in Europe it means Islam will have taken over.”

 

This Swiss Parliamentarian saw life in minarets. For me minarets are just concrete and steel. The honour of a mosque is not in its minarets but it is in the hearts and minds of the people who pray inside the mosques.  We do not need to build high towers on our mosques. We need to build our current and future generations to be the true representatives of Islam.

 

If only 25% of 400,000 Swiss Muslims establish dialogue with their neighbours, classmates, colleagues and other Swiss people and remove misunderstandings and the hate that some Islamophobe politicians have created in their minds, I am sure within a year the proponents of religious tolerance in Switzerland will win the next referendum. This will help in restoring the good image of Switzerland that has been tarnished due to few Swiss Islamophobes. 

 

Moreover, about 7%, or 14.5 billion Swiss francs ($14.4 billion), of Swiss exports go to Muslim countries. Swiss economy needs markets in Muslim countries.

 

If the Swiss conservatives want to question the growth of Islam, they should establish dialogue with Swiss Muslims. I am sure they will find blessings in the growth of Islam. Christianity and Islam do not fear each other. It is the misguided Christians and Muslims that create fear of each other.

 

Although, the tragedy of 9/11, the terrorism around the world, the Danish cartoons, the Islamophobe movies, the ban on hijab in France and the ban on mosque minarets in Switzerland have helped in increasing Islamophobia and hate towards Muslims but these tragedies have also increased curiosity about Islam in the minds of millions of non-Muslims.  And when a curious non-Muslim meets with the true follower of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and learns Islam, this non-Muslim embraces Islam without any hesitation.  I strongly believe the current persecution of Islam will lead towards the renaissance of Islam.  Muslims have to go through the current sufferings and chaos. The renaissance of Islam is just around the corner. That’s the way I see this. May Allah bring peace for everyone on earth. Amen.

 

 

`Mosques with minarets' ban can spell deeper trouble - By Sunanda K. Datta-Ray - The Free Press Journal, Mumbai

Saturday, December 05, 2009

Swiss Minaret Ban

In an otherwise very informative and exhaustive coverage of events and background to the recent Swiss Minaret Ban, an Indian commentator has none the less chosen to ignore a barrage of European, American and even Israeli condemnation of the Swiss anti-Islamic move.

Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, writing in Free Press Journal, Mumbai, has not even hinted that the Ban was being so vehemently protested in Europe, as it is interpreted being first Right-Wing success at using democratic election to impose its agenda on a European country.

This is akin to first blood drawn that instantly revives the dark memories of Hitler's first democratic victory. Country after country, the fascists right-wing parties are improving their political inroads in electoral territories. UK, France and now Switzerland show signs of neo-Nazi revival. Even Israelis, who have no love lost for Muslims of the world, have gone on record condemning Swiss development. Jerusalem Post carried a story titled: Jews back Muslims on Minaret Ban.  Apparently, Europe is more fearful of fascism as it has suffered more in the 2nd World War at the hands of Nazis, than the politically motivated propaganda of Islamic ‘take over’ of Europe.

Ray's article is the first in Indian English media to focus on a move in Europe, that has been a very old and very insidious state policy giving out mixed signals on building of Masjids, especially in urban centers in India.

In last 60 years, during which Muslim population in the city of Mumbai, has increased manifold and stands at 3 million as per 2001 official Census, City authorities have granted no licenses for Muslims to building Masjids, except ONE in a Muslim residential enclave.

Though city authorities have been promising oft and on, that extra FSI (Floor Space Index) will be granted to existing Masjids, so they could rebuild adding extra floors; such false promises have become routine at the time of electioneering to get Muslim votes. Even the so-called middle of the road secular Congress regularly promises to rebuild Babri Masjid that was demolished by the Right-Wing Hindutva hooligans in a grand conspiracy to gain political power.

Tomorrow, Dec 6 is the black day, that Indian Muslims will be observing all over the country and in the lands overseas.

  

In some ways, the interplay of different political forces in India is much faster than that in Western countries. Mercifully, though, not as brutal and blood shedding on a scale as the events of the tragic 2^nd World War!

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

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http://www.freepressjournal.in/FPJ/FPJ/2009/12/05/ArticleHtmls/05_12_2009_005_014.shtml?Mode=1

`Mosques with minarets' ban can spell deeper trouble

BY SUNANDA K. DATTA-RAY

Switzerland has decided not to allow any more mosques with minarets.
The ban is of little practical value but could be immensely significant in the confrontation that seems to be building up between Islam and the West.


Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan once tactlessly referred to minarets as the `bayonets of Islam'. Not surprisingly, that is being quoted now that Switzerland has decided, even more tactlessly in the opinion of most liberal European opinion-makers, not to allow any more mosques with minarets. The ban is of little practical value but could be immensely significant in the confrontation that seems to be building up between Islam and the West.

Clearly, the Muslim presence must rankle with the native Swiss for a majority of people in 22 out of 26 cantons to vote against minarets in the referendum for which the far-right populist Swiss People's Party was responsible.

With a turnout of more than 53 per cent, 57.5 per cent of voters supported the ban. That left the government with no choice under the Swiss constitution except to give legal force to the voice of the people. Mr Ulrich Schluer of the SPP offered the justification that the European Union courtat Strasbourg had recently ruled against crucifixes in Italian school classrooms. What's sauce for the Christian goose, he argued, is sauce for the Muslim gander.


Switzerland's 400,000 Muslims account for only 4 per cent of the population. They are not immigrants from Bangladesh or Somalia but mostly Bosnians who are Europeans in every way looks and culture - save religion. Switzerland has only four mosques with minarets which are not essential to a Muslim place of worship.

They are really no more than a form of ornamentation like pointed arches. That is one reason why Saudi Arabia's strictly puritanical Wahabi sect doesn't allow a minaret at all. That apart, Mr Taj Hargay, chairman of Oxford's Muslim Educational Centre and Imam of the Summertown Islamic Congregation, holds that minarets are `not integral to contemporary mosque design.' He means that the purpose of a minaret is to summon the faithful to prayer. A high perch and a piercing voice were essential for the purpose in medieval times.

Today's sophisticated technology, especially in a highly advanced country like Switzerland, boasts many means of swift and silent communication that are infinitely superior to calling out from a tower. In any case, Swiss laws on noise pollution do not permit the voice of the muezzin as we know it in India. Many think this purely decorative feature is obligatory because it is supposed to be rooted in Islamic tradition. But tradition itself means no more than a certain age and a certain environment. What was regarded as desirable, or even essential, amidst the boundless sands of 15th century Arabia can be neither essential nor even desirable in a busy city in 21st century Europe.

That applies to many other customs and practices that are treated today as sacrosanct. The nonMuslim's voice of reason pointing this out only provokes resentment and resistance.
Responding with the recalcitrance of a beleaguered minority, Muslims seem determined to dig in their toes. A recent order -not quite with the force of a fatwa -by Iran's Supreme Leader reminded people of the conflict of loyalties that Muslims in the West face.

Instructed by Ayatollah Khamenei, his representative in London, Ayatollah Abdolhossein Moezi, director of the Islamic Centre of England, called on Muslim immigrants to be `better Muslims' and not to join the West's armed forces. It is unIslamic, he says, for them to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. The directive followed the tragedy of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the American-born military psychiatrist son of Palestinian refugees, who ran amok and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, as already discussed in this column.


It's only one straw in a wind that seems to suggest that the long talked of clash of civilizations may not any longer be a figment of literary imagination. British Muslims in the small town of Lutonnot long ago publicly jeered at a regiment holding a ceremonial parade after returning from the war in Iraq. Only this week they threw eggs and screamed abuse at 38year-old Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Yorkshire-born daugh- t ter of Pakistani immigrants who is Britain's seniormost Muslim peer and a member of the Conservative c shadow cabinet. The Luton folk t say the highly Westernised a baroness is no Muslim and accuse a her of responsibility for killing i Muslims by supporting Britain's e role in the war in Afghanistan. i Baroness Warsi symbolizes the a Muslim dilemma in the West.

President Barack Obama's longawaited announcement on sending another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan early next year can only add to the fury of those of her co-religionists who see the Taliban as defender of their spiritual interests. Yet, these militant Muslims t have no qualms about benefiting fully from the economic prosperity of the Western countries where a they have settled. j Both sides seem bent on a i showdown, with a Canadian writer, Mark Steyn, warning that Europe is sitting on a `demo- l graphic time-bomb'.The 2004 s murder by a Muslim of the Dutch s film-maker Theo van Gogh has a not been forgotten. Claiming to t fear the `Islamification' of Europe, s the Dutch politician, Mr Geert Wilders, wants the Quran banned as a `fascist book'.Though Den- f mark was internationally isolated after the 2005 cause celebre when the paper Jyllands-Posten pub- g lished 12 cartoons that Muslims l found offensive, the Danish People's Party says Denmark'sChristian identity is in peril. Disputes a over mosques are simmering in Germany, Denmark, France, Italy, Austria and the Netherlands. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is pushing ahead with his plan to extend the ban on overt religious symbols to an outright prohibition of the burqa.


To some extent, the Swiss ban may reflect a small landlocked country's insularity and instinctive aversion to outsiders. Taking advantage of that psychology and also taking its cue from the Turkish prime minister, the SPP flooded the country with posters showing a black-veiled Muslim woman against a forest of missile-shaped minarets. The evocative image was all the more dangerous because memories of 600 years of Ottoman rule in south-eastern Europe and of the Moorish kingdoms of Spain are laced into Europe's historic consciousness.

Muslims are a specific feature of the bigger fear of migration. Even Mr Herman Van Rompuy, the European Union president, once attacked Turkey's application to join the union on the grounds that it would endanger the `fundamental values of Christianity.' The damage now to Switzerland's neutral brand image is a small thing. As theDubai Worldcrisis shows, international finances are so closely meshed together that West Asian retaliation is not a serious threat either. The prospect of further estrangement of the world's Muslim population is by far the greatest peril. Iraq and Afghanistan are bad enough without a global polarization on religious lines. Christianity may have lost its force as a faith and a form of worship but it represents the world's still dominant cultural and political identity.

Switzerland’s Invisible Minarets - By PETER STAMM - THE NEW YORK TIMES

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/opinion/05stamm.html

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Switzerland’s Invisible Minarets

By PETER STAMM

Published: December 4, 2009

Winterthur, Switzerland

THREE years ago I was invited to the Tehran International Book Fair; afterward I traveled around the country. The mosques I visited were so empty as to give the impression that Iran was as secular as Western Europe.
It wasn’t until I took a trip to a place of pilgrimage in the mountains that I saw large numbers of the faithful. The traffic started piling up even before my group reached the town of Imamzadeh Davood. A few of the pilgrims were making the trek on foot, together with the sheep they intended to sacrifice. The narrow streets were bustling just as at Christian places of pilgrimage: booths crammed with junk, groups of teenagers taking pictures of each other, every nook and cranny packed with candles lighted by believers in the hope their wishes would be fulfilled.
I was received by the mayor and invited to dinner — the first Swiss he had ever met. He showed me the mosque and led me to the tomb of the saint. I, the unbeliever, was allowed into places where even pilgrims were not permitted. During my three weeks in Iran, my faith, or rather the lack thereof, was never an issue. However bellicose the political face of Islam often appears, in everyday practice what I experienced was a religion of hospitality and tolerance.
Switzerland, on the other hand, appeared alarmingly intolerant last weekend, when 58 percent of our voters approved a ban on the building of new minarets. When the minaret referendum was proposed by the rightist Swiss People’s Party, no one really took it seriously.
Some consideration was given to having it declared invalid on the grounds that it was unconstitutional as well as a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, but in the end the government agreed to allow the referendum to go forward, probably in the hope that it would be roundly defeated and thereby become a symbol of Swiss open-mindedness. So certain were the politicians of prevailing that hardly any publicity was fielded against the initiative. As a result, the streets were dominated by the proponents’ posters, which showed a veiled woman in front of a forest of minarets that looked like missiles.
Minarets have never been a problem in Switzerland. There are four in the entire country, some of which have been standing for decades. (One of them is in my city but I’ve never seen it.) And only two other minarets were being planned. Most mosques are in faceless industrial districts where no one notices them. But perhaps that is exactly the problem. Islamic immigrants don’t live with us but beside us, just as French, German, Italian and Romansch-speaking Swiss live alongside each other without a great deal of animosity — or interaction.
The average Swiss citizen has no real contact with Islam. Headscarves are seldom seen on the street, and chadors are practically nonexistent. Moreover, when young proponents of the ban talk about problems with Muslims, they almost exclusively mean young men from the Balkans, who come across as male chauvinists but are almost never active members of Muslim communities. Most people encounter Islam only through the news media, which don’t report on the Muslims in our country but focus on terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Iranian plans for an atomic bomb and Muammar el-Qaddafi’s absurd proposal to abolish Switzerland.
It’s hard to find one overarching explanation for why the Swiss voted as they did. Similar referendums have brought surprises: 35 percent of voters wanting to do away with the army, for instance, or 58 percent approving of same-sex partnerships. The prevailing Swiss attitude is both conservative and liberal: on the one hand everything should stay the way it is, on the other everyone should be able to do what he or she wants.
What’s most conspicuous in these referendums is that we are a nation of pragmatists, inclined to our dour obstinacy, and we owe our success not to grand ideas but to problem-solving. So focused are we on getting things done, it almost doesn’t matter if the problem isn’t a problem, or if the solution risks sullying the country’s reputation. We Swiss sacrificed our good standing as a multicultural and open-minded society to ban the construction of minarets that no one intends to build in order to defend ourselves against an Islam that has never existed in Switzerland.
Perhaps Muslims here are more Swiss than the rest of us might think. They too will solve the problem we’ve made for them: they are likely to swallow the results of this referendum, do without their minarets and continue to assemble for prayer, unnoticed and unperturbed.

Peter Stamm is the author of the novel “On a Day Like This.” This essay was translated by Philip Boehm from the German.

THE NEW YORK TIMES CONDEMNS SWISS MINARET BAN AS DISGRACEFUL

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/opinion/01Tue3.html?_r=1

EDITORIAL

 

A Vote for Intolerance

Published: November 30, 2009

Disgraceful. That is the only way to describe the success of a right-wing initiative to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland, where 57 percent of voters cast ballots for a bigoted and mean-spirited measure.

Under Switzerland’s system of direct rule, the referendum is binding.Switzerland’s 400,000 or so Muslims, most of whom come from Kosovo andTurkey, are legally barred from building minarets as of now. We can only hope that the ban is quickly challenged, and that the Swiss courts will find a way to get rid of it.

But the vote also carries a strong and urgent message for all Europe, and for all Western nations where Islamic minorities have been growing in numbers and visibility, and where fear and resentment of Muslim immigrants and their religion have become increasingly strident and widespread. The warning signs have been there: the irrational fierceness of official French resistance to the shawls and burkas worn by some Muslim women; the growing opposition in many European quarters to Turkish membership in the European Union.

Terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, notably 9/11 and the attacks on London,Madrid and Mumbai, have played a role in the perception of Muslims as a security threat. But the worst response to extremism and intolerance is extremism and intolerance. Banning minarets does not address any of the problems with Muslim immigrants, but it is certain to alienate and anger them.

In Switzerland, Muslims amount to barely 6 percent of the population and there is no evidence of Islamic extremism. If its residents can succumb so easily to the propaganda of a xenophobic right-wing party, then countries with far greater Muslim populations and far more virulent strains of xenophobia best quickly start thinking about how to counter the trend.

If left unchecked, xenophobia spreads fast. Already right-wingers in theNetherlands and Denmark have called for similar measures, and others are bound to be encouraged by the success of the Swiss People’s Party.

Tariq Ramadan on Swiss ban on minarets | New York Times: Swiss Ban on Minaret Building Meets Widespread Criticism

My compatriots' vote to ban minarets is fuelled by fear

By Tariq Ramadan

It wasn't meant to go this way. For months we had been told that the efforts to ban the construction of minarets in Switzerland were doomed. The last surveys suggested around 34 percent of the Swiss population would vote for this shocking initiative. Last Friday, in a meeting organized in Lausanne, more than 800 students, professors and citizens were in no doubt that the referendum would see the motion rejected, and instead were focused on how to turn this silly initiative into a more positive future.
 

Today that confidence was shattered, as 57 percent of the Swiss population did as the Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC) had urged them to -- a worrying sign that this populist party may be closest to the people's fears and expectations. For the first time since 1893 an initiative that singles out one community, with a clear discriminatory essence, has been approved in Switzerland. One can hope that the ban will be rejected at the European level, but that makes the result no less alarming. What is happening in Switzerland, the land of my birth?

There are only four minarets in Switzerland, so why is it that it is there that this initiative has been launched? My country, like many in Europe, is facing a national reaction to the new visibility of European Muslims. The minarets are but a pretext -- the UDC wanted first to launch a campaign against the traditional Islamic methods of slaughtering animals but were afraid of testing the sensitivity of Swiss Jews, and instead turned their sights on the minaret as a suitable symbol.

Every European country has its specific symbols or topics through which European Muslims are targeted. In France it is the headscarf or burka; in Germany, mosques; in Britain, violence; cartoons in Denmark; homosexuality in the Netherlands -- and so on. It is important to look beyond these symbols and understand what is really happening in Europe in general and in Switzerland in particular: while European countries and citizens are going through a real and deep identity crisis, the new visibility of Muslims is problematic -- and it is scary.

At the very moment Europeans find themselves asking, in a globalizing, migratory world, “What are our roots?”, “Who are we?”, “What will our future look like?”, they see around them new citizens, new skin colors, new symbols to which they are unaccustomed.

Over the last two decades Islam has become connected to so many controversial debates -- violence, extremism, freedom of speech, gender discrimination, forced marriage, to name a few -- it is difficult for ordinary citizens to embrace this new Muslim presence as a positive factor. There is a great deal of fear and a palpable mistrust. Who are they? What do they want? And the questions are charged with further suspicion as the idea of Islam being an expansionist religion is intoned. Do these people want to Islamize our country?

The campaign against the minarets was fuelled by just these anxieties and allegations. Voters were drawn to the cause by a manipulative appeal to popular fears and emotions. Posters featured a woman wearing a burka with the minarets drawn as weapons on a colonized Swiss flag. The claim was made that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Swiss values. (The UDC has in the past demanded my citizenship be revoked because I was defending Islamic values too openly.) Its media strategy was simple but effective. Provoke controversy wherever it can be inflamed. Spread a sense of victimhood among the Swiss people: we are under siege, the Muslims are silently colonizing us and we are losing our very roots and culture. This strategy worked. The Swiss majority are sending a clear message to their Muslim fellow citizens: we do not trust you and the best Muslim for us is the Muslim we cannot see.

Who is to be blamed? I have been repeating for years to Muslim people that they have to be positively visible, active and proactive within their respective western societies. In Switzerland, over the past few months, Muslims have striven to remain hidden in order to avoid a clash. It would have been more useful to create new alliances with all these Swiss organizations and political parties that were clearly against the initiative. Swiss Muslims have their share of responsibility but one must add that the political parties, in Europe as in Switzerland have become cowed, and shy from any courageous policies towards religious and cultural pluralism. It is as if the populists set the tone and the rest follow. They fail to assert that Islam is by now a Swiss and a European religion and that Muslim citizens are largely “integrated”. That we face common challenges, such as unemployment, poverty and violence -- challenges we must face together. We cannot blame the populists alone -- it is a wider failure, a lack of courage, a terrible and narrow-minded lack of trust in their new Muslim citizens.





Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, is professor of contemporary Islamic studies at Oxford University, and hosts Islam & Life at Iran’s Press TV. 

(Source: The Guardian)

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/world/europe/01iht-swiss.html

Swiss Ban on Minaret Building Meets Widespread Criticism

Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A Zurich mosque with a minaret. In a Swiss referendum, 57.5 percent of voters approved a ban on minaret construction.

By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE

Published: November 30, 2009

GENEVA — Switzerland’s political leaders faced a chorus of criticism at home and abroad on Monday over a ban on the construction of minarets that passed overwhelmingly by referendum on Sunday.

Related

The Lede: Europe Reacts to the Swiss Minaret Ban

Times Topics: Switzerland

The ban has propelled the country to the forefront of a European debate on how far countries should go to assimilate Muslim immigrants and Islamic culture.
Government ministers trying to contain the fallout voiced shock and disappointment with the result, which the Swiss establishment newspaper Le Temps called a “brutal sign of hostility” to Muslims that was “inspired by fear, fantasy and ignorance.”
The country’s justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, said that the vote was not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture, but that it reflected fears among the population.
With support for the ban from 57.5 percent of voters, however, ministers were forced to admit they had failed to quell popular anxieties about the impact of what right-wing parties have portrayed as “creeping Islamization.”
Ms. Widmer-Schlumpf acknowledged that the vote was “undeniably a reflection of the fears and uncertainties that exist among the population — concerns that Islamic fundamentalist ideas could lead to the establishment of parallel societies.”
Outside Switzerland, criticism was harsh.
“I am a bit shocked by this decision,” France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said in an interview with RTL radio, calling it “an expression of intolerance.” He added: “I hope the Swiss come back on this decision.”
Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt, whose country holds the rotating presidency of theEuropean Union, described the vote as “an expression of quite a bit of prejudice and maybe even fear.”
Muslim communities in Switzerland reacted cautiously. “We were a bit shocked; we hadn’t expected this result,” Abdel Majri, the president of the League of Swiss Muslims, said in an interview. “This is another step toward Islamophobia in Switzerland and Europe in general.”
The government and most Swiss political parties had opposed the motion, he noted, attributing the size of the majority in favor of the ban to the right-wing parties’ campaign, which played on popular fears and misconceptions. “We are looking at how we can repair the situation,” he added.
Some Muslims in Europe expressed concern that there would be less understanding of the ban among Muslims living in Islamic countries who are less familiar with European politics and culture. “We are a bit afraid of the rise of extremism on both sides,” said Ayman Ali, secretary general of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe.