Cynics Unlimited

Some years ago I was driving around Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, with the editor of a magazine to which I sometimes contribute. On one block stood a Catholic church, a synagogue, and a mosque. My editor exclaimed that in his city, followers of the three great monotheistic religions were able to live in harmony with one another.

I understood his pride. Toronto boasts a similar religious diversity. A small Lutheran church I occasionally attend on College Street, for example, is in walking distance of a Buddhist temple, two synagogues (in Kensington Market, a traditional Jewish enclave) as well as several Christian churches of other denominations. Though Canada and Venezuela are for the most part at least nominally Christian nations, both have received immigrants from other religious traditions who have left their mark on their host societies. Thus a mosque like Toronto’s Masjid-El-Noor, complete with minaret (the tall slender tower attached to the mosque), does not look out-of-place in a major urban centre in a neo-Europe.

But perhaps not in Old Europe. At least that is what 57% OF Swiss citizens thought when in a referendum last month they voted in favour of a constitutional amendment that would ban the further construction of minarets in their country. The minaret, as mentioned above, is the tower attached to the mosque from which, in Islamic countries, the faithful are called to prayer.* Switzerland currently has four minarets. The amendment would not see them destroyed but would prohibit others to be built in future.

The amendment itself was spearheaded by the Swiss People’s Party, a right-wing group that made news a year ago by proposing that the families of immigrants who commit crimes be deported along with their offending member. The Party’s rationale for banning the minaret is that the structure symbolizes “political Islam and sharia law.” They emphasize the importance of guarding Switzerland against the alleged growing threat of Islamicization in Europe. In addition, they say, Muslims in the country would still be allowed to practise their religion and even to build new mosques (minus the minaret, of course).

The result of the referendum received widespread attention. On the one hand, it was praised by many conservatives, including several who openly stated “God bless the Swiss” (a somewhat ironic remark in that the Swiss aren’t especially religious). Some saw the decision as a kind of “tit for tat,” as the construction of churches is legally forbidden in a number of Islamic nations, such as Saudi Arabia. On the other side, the proposed ban was condemned as discriminatory and even racist. This criticism came not only from Muslims themselves but even from some Christian church leaders who viewed the ban as an infringement on religious freedom. Some Muslims furthermore pointed out what they believed was the injustice of the decision, noting that Serbian Orthodox churches and Sikh temples (called gurdwaras) are now being built on Swiss soil. Another frequent observation is that most of the Muslims in Switzerland do not hail from Islamic theocracies but from relatively secular places like Bosnia and thus hardly appear to be involved in any scheme to “Islamicize” their host country.

On a purely aesthetic level I can understand the ban. A minaret does seem somewhat incongruous in a landscape of chalets and church steeples. The Swiss may not be particularly observant judging by measures like church attendance, but they may hold a certain attachment to the religious traditions that form part of their history. And while neo-Europes like Canada and Venezuela have enjoyed their present-day Western culture for 500 years at most (the oldest Western city in the Americas, Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, was founded in 1498), Switzerland’s roots go back centuries. So the Swiss may regard the minaret as a sort of intrusion on those traditions.

On the other hand, I can’t help seeing the Swiss People’s Party’s spectre of Islamicization as a cheap ploy for votes. The fact that most Muslims in Switzerland aren’t radicals and aren’t even native to countries where militant Islam holds sway confirms my feeling, as does the Party’s ad for the ban, a picture of missile-like minarets sprouting up from a Swiss flag fronted by a woman in a black veil Also, logically it strikes me a bit puzzling that if the Swiss People’s Party is so concerned about an Islamic takeover why don’t they ban mosques themselves, in which after all the dreaded Muslim teaching supposedly goes on, rather than just the minarets? I fail to understand what is so dangerous about the minaret per se.

Throughout this debate the issue of religious freedom frequently arises. It is true that Muslims will not be forbidden to practise their faith or even build new mosques. Yet the ban on the minaret, without any justification other than it supposedly represents Islamic power, does come across as arbitrary and authoritarian. Similarly, the argument that what Switzerland decided was right because Islamic nations do the same or worse isn’t very convincing. Call me ethnocentric, but I like to think that we in the West are above fighting intolerance with more intolerance. (It’s moreover doubtful whether the Muslims affected by the minaret ban are the same people who would proscribe the construction of Christian houses of worship in their own countries.) The West should in my view show a good example of religious tolerance to the rest of the world.

We should now address the question of Serbian Orthodox churches and Sikh temples being permitted on Swiss territory. To put it simply, these faiths don’t have the same implications in the West that Islam does. While there are few if any “native” Orthodox Christians in Switzerland, Eastern Orthodoxy is not much different from Catholicism or Protestantism (the main religions in Switzerland). More importantly, the Orthodox do not seem to harbour any particular animosity towards the West. Nor do most Sikhs. Despite its doctrinal distance from Christianity, Sikhism as a faith and Sikhs as individuals are not perceived as a threat to the West or Western culture. Islam, and by extension all Muslims, are. Undoubtedly the members of the Swiss People’s Party know this, hence their silence on gurdwaras and Orthodox churches.

I am sure that if a similar referendum had been held in Canada I would have voted to allow the minarets, even though I’m not Muslim myself and even though I’m uncomfortable with some of the ways Islam is practised today. I like to believe that if I lived in Switzerland I would do the same. But I’m not Swiss. I’m not part of a country with ingrained traditions going back at least a millennium, not mere generations.

However, in the end the Swiss are masters of their own nation, and I won’t challenge the decisions they make in democratically held referenda. The best way to reverse the results of this decision is by internal dialogue, not by rulings made from on high. Further discussions on the matter promise to be interesting.

* The “adhan,” or call to prayer, was not an issue here, as it was in Britain, given that in Switzerland the call only takes place within the confines of the mosque itself.