Swiss watches are known for their precision. But this latest news from 'neutral' Switzerland is more like swiss cheese, full of holes.
Switzerland put to a referendum whether the country's 300,000 or so Muslims can build minarets for their mosques. And with a population of 7.5 million, as well as inflammatory posters such as the one above, the 'majority' of the Swiss voted for the ban to 'avoid' what some consider "creeping Islamicisation and sharia law." It is not the expected results that trouble me, it is the fact that this 'referendum' was actually put to a vote.
Already some Muslim 'democracies' around the world are denouncing this as a double standard and anti-democratic. And they can't fathom even the thought of the blatant and racist disregard for minority rights in a country such as Switzerland, the last bastion of 'neutrality.' They are wrong! Democracy by its purist definition is precisely that. A simple majority of 51 percent can rule over the minority of 49. Whereas, in a true Republic the rights of individuals and minorities are protected, even if the minority comprises only one percent against a 99 percent majority.
The moderate Muslims who live in Switzerland, mostly Turks and former Yugoslavs, had even given written declarations that a call to prayer would not be performed. That minarets simply would be a symbolic part of a mosque. Actually, it is part of the architecture of what would constitute a mosque. In the end, the minaret was seen as a symbol - but a symbol of a political and aggressive Islam, a symbol of Islamic law. So said Oskar Freysinger, member of parliament for the Swiss People's Party, "The minute you have minarets in Europe it means Islam will have taken over."
To put this in the proper perspective, can you imagine the justifiable outcry if one of the more moderate Muslim nations put to a vote whether its Christian minority can't put bells on their churches? In our world of growing intolerance, 'restrictions' on religious minorities have taken on a whole new meaning. No longer should non-Muslims argue that religious minorities in Turkey and other 'democratic' Muslim nations cannot 'practice what they preach.' At least the churches in Turkey have bells, and they are ringing.
