Rights groups are up in arms tonight following official confirmation that Swiss voters have approved a constitutional amendment banning the construction of minarets.
A minaret is a tall, thin tower which is built as part of (or sometimes adjacent to) a mosque, and is traditionally used to make the call to prayer for nearby Muslims. Much as Christian churches often have steeples, minarets are seen as a major identifying feature for Muslim religious structures.
And indeed, the impetus for the ban seems to primarily be right wing angst about the nation’s growing immigrant population, which is chiefly Muslim. Muslims make up roughly 4% of the nation’s population, making them the largest non-Christian religious group.
The campaign played up the “threat” posed by the Islamization of Switzerland, a prominent poster featured a burqa wearing woman standing in front of a Swiss flag impaled on imposing black minarets.
Though Switzerland has no nationally recognized state religion, its assorted cantons mostly have officially recognized state religions of their own which are subsidized by taxpayers.
While the ban is largely expected to be overturned by either the Swiss Supreme Court or the European Court of Human Rights as a violation of religious freedom compacts the Swiss government has agreed to respect, it is seen as a major victory for the Swiss People’s Party, the populist political party that pressed for the ban.
But the vote’s international attention may also do considerable harm to Switzerland’s traditional neutrality, and already it is being condemned by overseas Muslims. Swiss Muslims, for their part, are trying to figure out what this ban means for their role in Swiss society.
Is it Christmas already? What a wonderful gift the Swiss people just made to the western world. Let's not let this go to waste. Islam is not a religion, its a cult. Therefore it deserves no protection.
There is a reason Islam seems to be the only religion that is at war with every other religion. You have Muslims killing Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddahists, Bahaii's.
If Muslims want tolerance they need to show tolerance, the day Saudi Arabia allows a Church then will be a day we can consider reversing this ban. This is a great day, and I hope many countries follow suit until all Muslims reject the extremists in their religion. If millions can come out to protest a stupid Danish cartoon, why can't the same amount show up to speak out against terrorism?
Let's look at the UK that took in millions of Muslims into their country and yet you have research that shows 20% Muslims supporting terrorism. That's 20% that are supposed to be considered moderate Muslims that are assimilated into British culture. Think about it 20% of millions, that means hundreds of thousands of terrorist sympathizers are walking the streets of the UK.
I won't even get into the fact that over 60% of Muslims in the UK support Sharia law. Bunch of animals.
There is nothing wrong with supporting terrorism against Americans who are occupying Muslim countries. In fact it is promoted by antiwar.com
The Swiss did the right thing. I applaud them.
How does the European court of human rights have jurisdiction over the Swiss government?
Because Switzerland has been a member of the Council of Europe since 1963.
The very same court recently banished the cricifix from all European schools. Europenas are treated like dirt by their elites… God bless Swiss and its people!
Try walking around any muslim country with a bible or a crucifix in your hands. They will chop you to pieces in the name of allah, the nevrotic, blood thirsty god of these retarded counries…
Ah so that's why there have Supreme Court Justices in Pakistan who are Hindu and Christian.
Denmark also has a Muslin problem:
http://stop-obama.info/barack_obama_014.htm
The New York Post in 2002 ran an article by Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard, in which they forecasted accurately that the growing immigrant problem in Denmark would explode. In the article they reported: 'Muslim immigrants constitute 5 percent of the population but consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending.' 'Muslims are only 4 percent of Denmark's 5.4 million people but make up a majority of the country's convicted rapists, an especially combustible issue given that practically all the female victims are non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes. ''Over time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers, they wish less to mix with the indigenous population. A recent survey finds that only 5 percent of young Muslim immigrants would readily marry a Dane.' 'Forced marriages – promising a newborn daughter in Denmark to a male cousin in the home country, then compelling her to marry him, sometimes on pain of death – are one problem'. 'Muslim leaders openly declare their goal of introducing Islamic law once Denmark's Muslim population grows large enough – a not-that-remote prospect. If present trends persist, one sociologist estimates, every third inhabitant of Denmark in 40 years will be Muslim.' It is easy to understand why a growing number of Danes would feel that Muslim immigrants show little respect for Danish values and laws. An example is the phenomenon common to other European countries and the US: some Muslims in Denmark who opted to leave the Muslim faith have been murdered in the name of Islam, while others hide in fear for their lives. Jews are also threatened and harassed openly by Muslim leaders in Denmark, a country where once Christian citizens worked to smuggle out nearly all of their 7,000 Jews by night to Sweden – before the Nazis could invade.
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the
oppressed." –Steve Biko
Muslims don't belong in Europe or the west (anymore then the west should be interfering in muslim countries to be sure). Mass Islamic immigration has been a dreadful mistake for western Europe. They have now NEEDLESSLY created an alienated, dangerous, racial-criminal underclass, all because of bad unwanted immigration policy that ordinary Europeans were never alowed to vote upon and never chose. A recent opinion poll showed overwhelming majorities of native Dutch agreeing that mass immigration was the greatest mistake the Netherlands ever made.
You read too much of Daniel Pipes and are now sounding like him. What that his fearmongering has to do with the minarets?
While we're at it, let's ban churches and synagogues. Israel and the US have killed exponentially more innocent people, even in the last decade, than all Muslim nations combined.
I recall the 2002 Israeli siege of the Church of the Nativity, the purported birthplace of Christian cult leader Jesus Christ. It was blocked out by the US media, which is predominantly pro-Israel, because gawd forbid that American Christians see the birthplace, a church no less, of their God being under attack by Israel.
Take your "arguments" elsewhere. Israeli hasbara (propaganda) and the Megaphone talking points spewed by her operatives worldwide won't work on this site. Although they are so ludicrous they will give us all a good laugh.
The Swiss haven't killed anybody.
Switzerland is a nice country but a very conservative one. Till 1971 Swiss women did not have the right to vote in national elections. Two of the cantons witheld this right till 1989.
While banning minarets would not make any sense to a normal person, this is probably the Swiss way of showing that Christianity is better than Islam.
I've been to Switzerland several times. Say what you will, but I'll tell you this. I'd rather take my chances walking alone at night downtown in any Swiss city to an American one. I hope it stays that way for the Swiss people.
At least they weren't forced to wear burkhas or the veil or have acid thrown in their faces for refusing to do so.
Just like the USA, much of the industrial prowess of the European countries are due to the work of immigrants. During boom time everyone is happy, during the downturn the majority tries to marginalize the minorities to force them to leave the country or give-up all the rights. The minarets are not the issues the racism, bigotry, and religious intolerence is.
What you say is LUDICROUS! Are you really saying the industrial revolution in Europe was due to muslim immigrants? This is untrue and an historical falsehood. There were probably fewer then 50,000 Muslims in the whole of western Europe until 1950. Europe has no immigrant tradition to compare to America. For historical, demographic and cultural reasons your comparison is absurd!
Much of the immigration happened after the Second World War, that is when the Europeans were running out of manpower and had to allow immigration. They relied on immigrants for the past 60 years and now when they are seeing a downturn they want to kick the immigrants (alongwith their third generation citizens) out. Not much different from the kind of anti-Mexican sentiments we see here, but in this case since they cannot denigrate Catholicism they invent other excuses.
I don't think the Swiss people should have to explain themselves to you. The Swiss people are entirerly within their rights in doing what they want in Switzerland. The Islamic world is the last place on earth to be casting stones when it comes to religous intolerance, by the way.
Muslims aren't the only people who count as immigrants, you know.
What a curse organized religion is on mankind. One good thing about communism is that it put religion on the back burner where it belongs. As long as our ally Saudi Arabia prohibits churches I see nothing wrong with the Swiss prohibiting minrets.
Switzerland competing with Afghanistan on women rights?
Since Switzerland has signed several international treaties promising not to persecute religious minorities, the international community has every right to ask for an explanation.