[mukto-mona] The Swiss ban on minarets: Muslims dismayed, Islamists thrilled

The Swiss ban on minarets: Muslims dismayed, Islamists thrilled

By Tarek Fatah
AverroesPress.com

While Muslims around the world recover from the shocking news that the Swiss have voted to ban all minarets, trust me, there is glee and joy among the leaders of the world jihadi movement. 

Osama and Zawahiri must be giving each other high fives as they get fresh ammunition to depict their worldwide terrorist jihad as merely a response to West's so called war against Islam.

The bigots and xenophobes in Switzerland may be relishing in their unexpected victory, but it begs the question: what have they accomplished other than strengthening the very forces they sought out to weaken?

If the objective of the Swiss Right was to fight Islamism in Europe, one of the sharpest critics of Islamism in Switzerland disagrees with their strategy. Roy Brown is the spokesperson of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) in Geneva, where he has been a thorn in the side of the Islamists. Reacting to the vote, Brown expressed outrage, describing the result as "the most stupid decision ever made by the Swiss."

"What were they thinking," he mused over the phone. "This sets us back in our fight against hate and bigotry that is a hallmark of the Islamists, not the West," he added.

The lead up to the referendum was marked by a controversial poster put out by the far right Swiss Peoples Party, which showed mosque minarets in the form of missiles. Switzerland's Federal Commission against Racism banned the poster in October as a racially prejudiced message, saying "The commission believes that this could threaten social cohesion and public peace. 

The government commission asserted that the posters "feed prejudices, are over-simplistic and presents Islam overall in an unfavourable manner." In fact the cities of Basel and Lausanne earlier described the poster as racist and banned it in publicly owned spaces.

The poster, which read "Stop! Yes for the ban on minarets," was without doubt xenophobic, and played on the fears of the ordinary Swiss. However, it is also a fact that it was not the Swiss Far Right who had made the link between the minaret and the missile. That honour belongs to Turkey's current Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan who in 1998 read this poem in public:

"The mosques are our barracks, 
the domes our helmets, 
the minarets our bayonets and 
the faithful our soldiers..."

Mr. Erdogan was sentenced to 10 months in jail by a Turkish court for spreading religious hatred, but was freed after serving only four. Today, thanks to such foolish utterances by Islamist politicians and clerics, the Swiss Muslims are today paying the price. 

Ultra nationalism and xenophobia reside below the surface in all societies. In Europe it is manifested by the rise of fascist tendencies while in developing countries one can see hatred of the 'other' manifested by tribalism. Giving in to xenophobia or staying silent in the face of such hatred is the first step towards far more serious tragedies. 

Having said that, it would also be foolish to portray the vote as a reflection of the supposed inherent bigoted nature of the Swiss. Depicting them as racist and intolerant of racial and religious minorities would not be fair. While xenophobia must be confronted, genuine concerns and fears of a people also need to be heard.

The vote should be an eye-opener for both the chattering classes in Switzerland who said it would never happen and the Muslim population in Europe who seem to have surrendered their leadership to the Islamists among them.

We need to ask, why did a very highly educated and affluent section of European population feel that banning the minaret was some sort of an answer to their fear of a rise of Islamism in their country? 

The vast majority of the Swiss who voted to ban the minaret were not the urban marginalized neo-Nazis expressing their racist anger at foreigners. Of course, some did act our of hate, but most seem to be saying to their leadership, "we feel insecure and we feel you are not doing enough to address our fears." This sense of insecurity, even if it is not based on facts, must be addressed by the elites, otherwise the future does not bode well.

Swiss fears of the rise of Islamism may or may not be rational, but the pronouncements of some Swiss Muslims have not helped. Geneva has been the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1950s and is home to the radical Islamic Centre of Geneva founded by the father of Switzerland's most famous Muslim, Tariq Ramadan. His brother Hani heads the Saudi-funded mosque, which received 18 million Saudi Riyals in one year alone.

As an example of the insensitivity shown by the Ramadan family towards the Swiss, in December 2002, Hani Ramadan triggered an outcry in the country when writing for the French newspaper, "Le Monde" he defended stoning to death as a punishment for adults engaging in consensual sex outside a marriage. He defended his utterance saying he was following Islamic Sharia law. It is shocking statements like this that have accumulated over the years and have triggered Swiss fears of its Muslim citizens and Islam.

The Swiss Commission Against Racism publicly reprimanded Hani Ramadan, saying he had damaged the image of the Muslim community in Switzerland. Nine years later, that warning has been proven right.

Also contributing to this fear of Islam in Switzerland are the hate mongering diplomats from Iran and the Arab world who descend in Geneva every few months and use the UN Human Rights Council there to mock at western values while promoting Sharia Law as an alternative to Universal Human Rights. The statements of Islamic delegates get published in the Swiss media and cause concern among the population who wrongfully associate the Islamic government representatives led by Saudi Arabia and Iran as representative of the Swiss Muslim population.

Reaction

Unlike their British and French counterparts, Muslims in Switzerland responded to the ban on minarets with grace. There was no burning of flags or cars, just a dignified statement that did justice to a peaceful community that is largely secular and well integrated.

However, some North American Islamist groups did not want to miss the opportunity. They tried to capitalize on the issue by beating the time-tested drum of victimhood. The Council of America-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has been labelled as an unindicted co-conspirator in a recent terror trial, wrote to President Obama urging him "to repudiate the decision of Swiss voters to deny Muslims in that nation the same religious rights granted to citizens of other faiths." 

Such rhetoric begs the question: When Saudi Arabia bans not just church steeples, but churches itself, does CAIR or any other American Islamist outfit demand that the US president intervene? Muslims who are comfortable with the ban on non-Muslim places of worship in Arabia have no moral grounds to question the Swiss vote banning minarets. North American Muslims who have benefitted financially from the Saudis or who take inspiration from the Iranian Islamist regime make matters worst when they cry 'discrimination' and 'Islamophobia' at the drop of a hat.

Did CAIR write to President Bush asking him to intervene when the Taliban government in Afghanistan destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhist statues? Have they ever expressed outrage at the Iranian government's mistreatment of Baha'is in Iran? Have these North American Islamists uttered a single worked at the attacks on Coptic churches in Egypt?

On what grounds then do they write to President Obama asking him to intervene in Switzerland?

Muslims who are at ease with the 15th century occupation and conversion of the St. Sophia Church of Constantinople into the Hagia Sophia Mosque (now a museum) should first admit to the monstrosity of this action by their forefathers before lecturing the Swiss on pluralism. Will they appeal to President Obama asking him to intervene and ask the Turkish government to hand back the Hagia Sophia to its rightful owners-the Eastern Orthodox Church?

The Minaret

Lost in this debate has been the role of the Minaret in Islam. This, like so many subjects in contemporary Islam, has become a taboo no one wishes to talk about. It is true, the minaret today symbolizes the Mosque, but it is untrue that the minaret is a requirement under any Islamic law ranging from the Quran or the sayings of Prophet Muhammad.

The fact is that The Prophet never built a minaret over his own mosque. The fact is the most holy of Muslim places; the Kaaba in Mecca had no minaret for centuries. Most Muslims are oblivious to this fact and most clerics who are aware of this are unwilling to ever speak on this issue for fear of being seen as lacking a commitment to their fate.

Here are the names of the people who alongside Muhammad had a hand in shaping Islam and who never once in their lives saw a minaret over the mosque.

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) (d. 632), 
Caliph, Abu Bakr (d. 634), 
Caliph Umar (d. 644), 
Caliph Osman (d. 656), 
Caliph Ali (d. 661), 
Caliph Hasan bin Ali (d. 670), 
Caliph Muawiya (d. 680), 
Caliph Yazid (d. 683), 
Caliph Abdullah bun Zubair (d. 692), and I could go on.

Muslims need to know that even after the Kaaba was destroyed in the civil war between two competing caliphs in 684, the rebuilt Kaaba had no minarets. In one of Islam's most spectacular mosques, today known as the Dome on the Rock built in 687, there was no minaret.

The first minaret to appear as part of a mosque came nearly a century after the advent of Islam and was adopted from orthodox churches in Damascus. It was the steeple of the church that inspired the minaret, not some teaching of the Quran or the saying of Muhammad. 

Today, Muslims in Europe and America should look eastwards toward Singapore for a solution to the dilemma they face. Singapore's Muslim make up a substantial minority in that island country. At the first whiff of resentment towards tall minarets in Buddhist and Christian neighbourhoods, the Muslim leadership decided to change their design of the mosque and to make it resemble the Kaaba cube. Their latest mosque is spectacular in sight.

If the design of the mosque can change when we moved from Medina to Damascus in the 8th century, why cannot we adapt the mosque to suit the cityscape of Toronto and Zurich in the 21st century? After all the mosques in India do not look like the mosques in Turkey.