Joan Smith’s point that the Swiss decision to ban minarets was framed in terms of a false choice, reduced to only two permissible responses, explains why the ensuing national debate has been so fierce and so polarised:
[E]ither you could vote with the right, some feminists and parts of the left to outlaw minarets in Switzerland, or you could vote with a coalition of government ministers, business leaders and churches to allow them. If you want to make a statement that you don’t like conspicuous religious symbols of any sort, Muslim, Christian or anything else, but also dislike the notion of one group being singled out, how on earth would you have voted? I’m sure this conundrum influenced at least some of the 47% of the Swiss electorate who didn’t use their vote, producing a relatively low turnout by Swiss standards.
Textbook anti-Muslim bigotry
The anti-minaret campaign by parties of the Right such as the SVP and others, was based on projecting the minaret as a symbol of the threat of the Muslim immigrant population. This was no fine-grained reaction to Islamic extremism. Even though some Swiss people were too appalled by the stark binary terms of the ban to vote, many were made to feel frightened enough by the threat of Islamic extremism to vote for a ban. The SVP campaign, with it’s graphical imagery of minarets arranged in a grid of missiles on the Swiss flag is nothing other than textbook anti-Muslim bigotry.
As David T argues:
“Although the vote no doubt reflects fears of extremism to some extent, it is also quite obviously also intended to be a “rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture”. There is nothing intrinsically offensive about mosque architecture. Minarets do not symbolise the politics of Al Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood. They are a common feature to the many varied traditions within Islam.”
Although there’s no doubt that many Swiss people voted to ban minarets for purely racist reasons, to damn all who voted for the ban as “Islamophobes” is absurd and simplistic. Many voted for the ban based on wholly admirable secular motives, and they do not deserve to be demonised in this way. Tariq Ramadan, for example, has insisted that the Swiss referendum was simply populist anti-Muslim fear-mongering. Ramadan misunderstands why some people in his adopted country might have a problem with the role of religion in public life. But he goes further and also applies the same reductivist over-simplification that he uses on the Swiss to the rest of Europe. As demonstrated in this ridiculous statement:
Every European country has its specific symbols or topics through which European Muslims are targeted. In France it is the headscarf or burka; in Germany, mosques; in Britain, violence; cartoons in Denmark; homosexuality in the Netherlands – and so on.
Which to me just sounds like wrongheaded generalisation and Joan Smith notes Ramadan’s position and dismisses it for exactly the same reasons:
Tariq Ramadan doesn’t use the word in his polemic but he does claim without qualification that “voters were drawn to the cause by a manipulative appeal to popular fears and emotions”. Corralling a wide range of people, many of whom disagree profoundly with each other, under one great Islamophobic umbrella is a familiar tactic but it’s not conducive to civilised discussion. If the debate about the powers demanded and enjoyed by religion – all of them, not just Islam – pops up in distorted forms in European countries, it is as much the responsibility of religious apologists such as Ramadan as it is the racist right.
The most succinct comment on Switzerland’s referendum against minarets as an attack of religious freedom, as an anti-secular statement and Switzerland’s failure in establishing a pluralist society, comes from Oliver Kamm:
The Swiss vote to ban the construction of minarets fits a wider pattern of populist protest in Western Europe. Parties of the Right have campaigned vigorously against the supposedly alien influence spread by Muslim populations.
That movement should be sharply distinguished from the secularist and liberal defence of the principles of a pluralist society.
…
The Danish Government valiantly upheld freedom of expression against attempts to stifle it. The Swiss electorate has, by contrast, struck a blow against freedom of association and conscience. It should be speedily overturned.
6 Comments
For the author to say that “many [Swiss citizens] voted for the ban based on wholly admirable secular motives” is about as objective and logical as an Islamicist saying that “The Taliban demolished Buddhist works of art for wholly admirable Islamic reasons”.
Be that as it may, I’m wondering why minarets should be banned and not mosques? And if mosques were to be banned then why not the Qur’an and Arabic calligraphy? Are these not all “Alien Influences”?
Titus Burkhardt must be turning in his grave.
This was a local government planning decree which should never have made it to the astronomical lunacy of a national referendum. Local planning permissions might enforce a rule of no minarets for mosques as part of a decision to keep religious symbols out of the public space or to preserve vernacular uniformity – and both reasons would be perfectly acceptable. Very tight-arsed – but that’s local government planning permission for you.
Banning minarets is stupid, but how you can equate it to blowing up the Bama sculptures I don’t know, and am astonished anyone could make such an equivalence.
Incidentally, Titus Burkhardt’s favourite style of mosque architecture was the traditional Maghrebi style which did not always use minarets. If all mosques in Switzerland were to be built henceforth in the Maghrebi style or even in a vernacular style, such as our own Didsbury Mosque (a converted Methodist Chapel), would be the last thing to turn Burkhardt in his grave.
The Abraj al-Bait in Mecca however is a different matter…
No you’re right, there is no equivalence between the Swiss referendum on banning minarets and the Afghani eradication of Buddhist statues. But that’s not the point I was trying to make.
Let me try and clarify:
The minaret is not actually a liturgical requirement for the building of a mosque, unlike the minbar or the orientation towards the Qiblah. The minaret therefore has a secondary role which is three-fold: metaphysical symbolism, aesthetic enhancement, and pure function (namely, the identification of the mosque and the call to prayer from a high point so as to reach as many people as possible). Note that this three-fold role was also precisely that of the giant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan which are now lamentably lost.
Those who supported the ban on minarets are probably less concerned about metaphysical symbolism and middle eastern aesthetics and more concerned about their third role, which is to call to prayer as many people as possible – both visbly and audibly. They may claim that they called for the ban of minarets because they “symbolize Islamic law” which is anti-secular, but clearly minarets have nothing to do with the Shariah.
It would be more true to say that they simply want to see the spread of Islam in their home country halted. Were it otherwise, then we may also have seen a Swiss referendum on the banning of the Star of David because it represents Talmudic Law, or a ban on Christian crosses because they affirm the rulings of the council of Nicea.
Now, the Swiss people may have every right to vote on the stopping the spread of Islam in their country. It is, after all, a democracy. But to say that there are admirable “secular” reasons for wanting the banning of an aspect of a religion wich has nothing to do with its laws, and, moreover, when only one religion out of many is being targeted, is to misrepresent secularism. Either that, or secularism has evolved into the kind of fundamentalism which sees one religion suprressing the architecural constructions of another. That was my point.
When secularism moves from not caring about religion to actively suppressing the religious symbols it can no longer claim to be based on objectivity, but has firmly stepped into the troubled domain of religious competetiveness.
To add to the above post, I personally think that most Swiss people are astute enough to see that this is true – which is probably why 47% of them didn’t want to even get involved.
Yes, 47% of the Swiss electorate didn’t vote. Given the stark binary in which the referendum was framed, it is no wonder that the Swiss far-Right managed to swing it in their favour.
I agree with everything you say, but to name all who voted for the ban “suppressors of religion” is to generalise against those Swiss secularists who might have a problem with religious symbols in the public space. It would be wrong to call all those who voted to ban minarets as “Islamophobic”.
Minarets are not banned in the UK but the adhan (call to prayer) is. That decision was made because of the disturbance caused by a call to prayer in Arabic broadcast over loudspeakers. Nobody has yet thought it fit to register that as “Islamophobic” (except some nutters, maybe), in spite of the fact that the adhan also has a secondary or tertiary symbolic role.
Religious architecture and customs adapt to diverse circumstances, secular laws being one of them. If symbolic form were to follow secular function, it is perfectly possible to develop a European mosque architecture without minarets; this even has traditional precedents. The adhan could be replaced by the sound of bells peeling five times a day to call believers to prayer. Why not? It might get past tight-arsed local government planning laws and bigoted referendums and give everyone the warm fuzzy feeling of religious observance.
“Relatively low”? Meme mongering in the media again.
A range of percentages for voter turnout have been reported. E.g. 53% here, figures up to 55% elsewhere. The turnout has also been described as “high” or “low”, according to the political viewpoint to be pushed, it seems. But mostly “low”, of course.
Clearly, those dismayed at the result have great interest in suggesting that it was somehow unusual or, ahem, “unrepresentative” — i.e. that surely the obviously absent Vast Majority(TM) would have voted otherwise, so on and so forth. Anything but having to accept that the referendum properly reflected the sentiment of the Swiss voting public. That would be too horrible to contemplate, oh no. Ergo, it could not be. And thus implicitly dismissive phrases such as “relatively low”. (Someone on HP even wrote “pitiful by Swiss standards”.)
But what are the facts? For the goodthinkful, sadly: Not. So. Good.
The reality is that the voter turnout for this referendum was normal and thus quite representative. The Swiss voting public have spoken.
But that won’t stop the spin, of course.