Swiss new minaret ban

Im fine with this as long as they extend the ban to all religious symbols.

I wish we could say this was an unpleasant surprise, but of course it's not really surprising at all. There was the famously horrible anti-immigration poster a few years back:



...and when I lived in Geneva in 2005 I remember seeing tabloid headlines about 'Helvetistan'. I'm never quite sure if it's depressing to realise that other countries have their own versions of our Mail/Express/Sun/NotW contingent, or somehow grimly comforting to know that we're not alone. Christ, I shudder to think what gets printed in Italy's tabloids...

But back to Switzerland: I suppose they are at least just carrying on a centuries-old tradition of religious intolerance.

i understand the desire for things to not change but i detest this european anti-muslim wave, even if some impulses behind it can be defended. i went to europe in 2000 and then in 2007, the bigotry coming from people i love disconcerted me on this last trip. although it felt manufactured in a sense i was also shocked to see more women in burqa, and upset by what i felt was a more repressive atmosphere in general. things that were far right before are almost mainstream now. i think a lot of the malaise is inherited from non-war on terror stuff like the euro or when the iron curtain came down, for example things changed for classical musicians as the influx from socialist countries could work for less and be just as good. it is surreal to see all this unease from my vantage point. if there is latent conflict it is peruvian immigration, for all the praise for peruvian cuisine i know there will come a time when someone will capitalise on anti-immigrant resentment. the human landscape has changed and that is hard to assimilate sometimes, for example you see more foreign girls and chilean girls may feel they are unfair competition, even small changes are hard to absorb. i try to keep myself from feeling change is a bad thing.

abolutley disgusting trend, austria, the netherlands, denmark, italy, greece, now the swiss. But if i understand things correctly the united nations, eu and amnesty might put pressure on them to revoke the law.

Good points from bruno about the prevalence of the burkha and the feeling of 'repression'. It's generally the case that when people feel their identity is under threat, they want to express that identity more strongly than before, not less. So you have a terrorist atrocity, followed by waves of hate-stirring in the press and the introduction of sweeping new police powers and whatnot, and then you're seeing more women walking around draped from head to foot in black cloth, not fewer.

Mr. Tea said:

Good points from bruno about the prevalence of the burkha and the feeling of 'repression'. It's generally the case that when people feel their identity is under threat, they want to express that identity more strongly than before, not less. So you have a terrorist atrocity, followed by waves of hate-stirring in the press and the introduction of sweeping new police powers and whatnot, and then you're seeing more women walking around draped from head to foot in black cloth, not fewer.

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In this case there has been no 'terrorist atrocity' - this conflict is purely in the mind of the europeans

Demented:



Are they banning mosques or just minarets?

just minarets. It's quite absurd.

I guess they can't ban mosques unless they change their constitution.

sufi said:

In this case there has been no 'terrorist atrocity' - this conflict is purely in the mind of the europeans

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Sure, I was talking about the UK...Switzerland seems to have skipped that step entirely and gone straight to the repressive legislation bit. Anyone know what's happening in Spain in this regard? Being the only other European country I can think of to have been on receiving end of Islamist terror in recent years.

What makes it doubly ridiculous is that most Muslims in Switzerland have come from either Turkey or the Balkans - not exactly traditional hotbeds of radical Islamism.

sufi said:

In this case there has been no 'terrorist atrocity' - this conflict is purely in the mind of the europeans

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I'm not defending racism or xenophobia - either generally or in the specific instance of the minaret ban - but that's simply not true. there hasn't been any one sensational attack on the order of 9/11 or the Madrid bombings, and certainly the great majority of this thinking is fear-based & misdirected, but there is a conflict; the inability of European countries - to varying degrees - to deal w/their populations of immigrant & second-generation Muslims, with fault on both sides. tbs that conflict is blown wildly out of proportion by right-wing xenophobes who exploit it to further many of their own abhorrent ideas, but they don't create it out of thin air. it is similar - if not the same (& obv w/several big differences) - in the U.S. w/r/t Latin immigration.

all that said, this is still an exceedingly stupid and ineffective way to deal with friction over Muslim immigration, just like the French ban on the hijab. it is, as scott says, purely anti-Muslim bigotry, and will certainly not help - in fact will detract from - trying to find any constructive solutions.

padraig (u.s.) said:

but there is a conflict; the inability of European countries - to varying degrees - to deal w/their populations of immigrant & second-generation Muslims

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And the inability of some immigrants to deal with the countries they've settled in. Fault on both sides, as you say.

The hijab ban can at least be construed in the context of human (specifically, women's) rights; whether that was foremost in the minds of the French parliament when they passed the law is up for debate, I guess.

But as you say, the Swiss decision is the exact opposite of what any thinking person would do to try and defuse tensions. It's the familiar pattern here: a kick in the teeth for ordinary Muslims, a shift to the right for the centre-of-gravity of mainstream politics and grist to the mill for extremists of every stripe.

Mr. Tea said:

But as you say, the Swiss decision is the exact opposite of what any thinking person would do to try and defuse tensions. It's the familiar pattern here: a kick in the teeth for ordinary Muslims, a shift to the right for the centre-of-gravity of mainstream politics and grist to the mill for extremists of every stripe.

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exactly, bad results all around.

I only brought that point up b/c it doesn't make sense to put everything on the Swiss (or whoever, in a similar situation dealing w/xenophobia). it's easy - and not incorrect - to say "how disgusting" of the minaret ban (or in the U.S., the Minutemen or Lou Dobbs) but those irrationally inflated fears are based on real concerns, some of which are at least partially valid, and which have to be addressed at some point in some fashion beyond just condemnation. unfortunately things like this ban make it even more difficult to address the issues in a constructive fashion b/c, as you say, it simply adds more fuel to the fire.

tbh I think the situation is even worse in the U.S., where the tension is mostly economic - that is to say, inextricable - as opposed to religious/cultural. that could just be my tunnel vision I guess. but there are big chunks of the U.S. economy that are heavily dependent on migrant labor, to the point of being unable to function w/o it. our immigration policy contradicts itself in so many ways. and the tension is very, very bad in a lot of places. normally just along the border & in places where large #s of migrants have clustered for economic reasons, but the recent town hall meeting fervor really brought a lot of ugly feelings to the forefront. angry white people talking about losing "their" America & dudes carrying loaded guns to town hall meetings was kind of a "minaret ban" moment for me. anyway.

padraig (u.s.) said:

but there is a conflict; the inability of European countries - to varying degrees - to deal w/their populations of immigrant & second-generation Muslims, with fault on both sides.

Mr. Tea said:

And the inability of some immigrants to deal with the countries they've settled in. Fault on both sides, as you say.

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i totally disagree,
you're ignoring certain realities to make the 'conflict' look even handed, & end up blaming the victim = nice!

if immigrants fail to integrate, they are the ones who suffer the greater proportion of ill-effects by far, but that's their problem and they choose to live in that situation. which actual problems do the regular swiss punters suffer from a minaret, or indeed from seeing a small though growing proportion of brown faces in the street?

also there is an obvious power disparity; a small minority of socially excluded immigrants are not in a position to oppress anyone (or, in many cases, to improve their own situation or achieve integration), on the other hand, a small minority of confused and hateful xenophobes clearly is in a position to help facilitate integration or spoil it,

this identity crisis does not occur in the minds of immigrants, this is purely a crisis of european & swiss 'identity'

Sorry, I should have been more clear - I was talking more about the UK rather than Switzerland. Obviously the latter is not a country with a known network of home-grown radicals and this ruling is down to xenophobia, pure and simple. On that much I agree totally.

But in general I think it's important to avoid the simplistic mindset that Muslims are only ever mere passive, reactive victims, responding in the only way they can to the hostility of the white State. Not to trivialise the prejudice any and all minorities face, of course - just pointing out that having justified grievances is not the sole prerogative of people from immigrant communities. And with respect to integration, it's clear that some immigrant communities have a marked tendency towards insularity and an antipathy to any kind of compromise when it comes to fitting in and becoming a citizen of the country they've settled in, choosing instead to saturate an area until it is effectively ghettoised. Some of this is can be put down to a natural defensiveness in the face of prejudice, but it's important to remember that the majority of white people in Britain are not in fact BNP supporters. And that ghettoisation and the lack of integration just fuels ignorance and prejudice, as well as holding people back from all kinds of education and employment opportunities.

Again, though, this doesn't appear to apply to Switzerland in the least.