Wait a minaret!
Swiss ban on Muslim prayer towers not driven by hate
I've a tendency to cringe a little when people use the term mainstream media to describe the newspapers and broadcasters who seem to speak in one, predictable and liberal voice.
It's seldom quite that simple. But it is rather astounding how often the standard view appears on every continent in virtually every major outlet.
Such is the case with the reporting of the decision in Switzerland to prevent the building of minarets, voted into the constitution by a referendum in which a clear majority of the people supported the ban. It's an intensely democratic measure that took place in arguably the most democratic nation in the world, where human rights are enshrined, rival religious denominations accommodated and four different languages given legal equality.
So to paint the country as some right-wing anomaly is just dumb. This, after all, is the home of the Geneva Convention, neutrality and niceness. The problem for the chattering classes is that when the genuine voices of the genuine people are heard, they frequently contradict progressive establishment opinion.
So the Swiss have now been dismissed as neo-Nazis, Islamophobes and rednecks. What the decision reflects, however, is a fear replicated throughout Europe that triumphalist Islam is intolerant, anachronistic, misogynistic, fundamentalist, anti-Semitic and violent. And the left are supposed to be against aggression, anti-Semitism, misogyny and fundamentalism. Not, it seems, when these vices are wrapped in the cloak of Islam.
It may well be that the Swiss vote is inappropriate, but we must remember that mosques can still be built and that the rights of Muslims are protected under Swiss law. Unlike Saudi Arabia where churches are illegal, Pakistan where Christians are regularly persecuted and often murdered, Egypt where Christians live in fear of pogroms or even a secular Muslim country, such as Turkey, where a recent survey revealed that 80% of the population would not live next door to a Jew or Christian.
In Switzerland, someone can convert to Islam and enjoy full privileges and police protection if threatened. In most Islamic nations, conversion out of the Muslim religion will lead at best to discrimination and most likely to forced exile or death. It's also long been the case in the Islamic world that even where Christians are tolerated, no church can be taller than a mosque.
Some of this attitude became apparent in Nazareth in the 1990s. The town is central to Christianity, but means little to Islam. Even so, Muslims were intent on building a mosque that dwarfed the church built where Jesus of Nazareth spent his childhood. It was only after Arab Christians pleaded with the Israeli government that a compromise was reached.
Minarets mean little. What they signify means a great deal. To millions of non-Muslims, they signify terrorist attacks, hysterical mobs salivating with threats after the publication of a cartoon, promises to slaughter innocent people when the Pope makes a comment about history, attempts to introduce sharia law and Dutch movie-makers murdered on the street.
The perception may be unfair, but we have to ask why it is there and who has to change their ways. Islamic extremists or those terrible Swiss who dare to have an opinion?
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