“This is their first step towards erasing our identity..” and “where is our Islamic loyalty? How could we allow such things to be built in Qatar?” are some reactions to Qatar’s decision of building the first church-form building in the country for Christians to perform their religious customs in 2006. However, Qatar did build its first Church despite the disapproval of many. In 2009, Swiss government held a referendum on the issue of building mosques with minarets in Switzerland. The people of Switzerland voted to ban minarets. In an online article about the issue in The Sunday Times[1], Swiss online users expressed their rejection by saying, “tomorrow belongs to us (Europeans). It is time to take Europe back” and that “it is destroying symbols of national heritage and basically annihilating local culture.”

29 November 2009, the Swiss government introduced article 72, paragraph three into the Swiss constitution, banning the construction of new mosques with minarets. On the same day, all news channels covered the gathering of thousands of people carrying candles in the streets of Bern, protesting against Switzerland’s decision. The construction of those minarets has been a political controversy in Switzerland since the building of the first minaret on top of an Islamic community center in Solothurn in 2005. The people of Switzerland have mixed feelings about this particular issue; the Swiss People’s Party, the Federal Democratic Union and “radical feminists” supported the ban; however, Swiss Federal Council, the Federal Assembly and many religious organizations opposed the ban. Should we support those who have deep concerns about Islam weakening their national culture and identity or should we support those who believe that it speaks against the freedom of religion?

 The “No minarets” campaign leaders and supporters believe that the spread of minarets is leading to an erosion of the Swiss and western identity. They view mosque minarets as a political symbol rather than a religious symbol where, Islam becomes a form of identity that is enforced on the country. They argue that accepting the construction of such symbols means following Islamic law and losing control over their own beliefs. Ulrich Schuler, Swiss MP and a leader of anti-minaret campaign says “Soon they will want the introduction of Sharia law.”[2] There are fears that by the acknowledgment of such Islamic symbols, the country will be under the influence of Islam and loose its Swiss and western individuality. The party also spread the thought of how increases in Muslim immigration would lead to an erosion of Swiss values.

Islamic culture is an important part of the European Western identity and cannot be separated. Like New York Times reporters Nick Cumming-Bruce and Steven Erlanger[3], I fail to understand how people believe and support the argument of Islam threatening the Western identity. As the two reporters wrote, supporters of the ban made Islam sound like it is taking over the country even though Switzerland is not at all being overloaded with Muslim extremist or mosques. In fact, there are only 400,000 Muslims out of a population of 7.5 million (less than 4%) and only four mosques with minarets! Yet, 57.5 of Swiss voters supported the ban. Similarly, Aljazeera English reporter Anas Altikriti argues that separating Islamic influence from Swiss culture will only lead to poorer and less meaningful Swiss and Western values.[4] Islam became part of their communities. How can Switzerland even argue whether Islamic structures define its national identity and culture when Swiss Muslims see that their identity as Western and Swiss is inseparable from their faith? Islam is a significant part of the European identity as there are about 30 million European Muslims. Islam contributed in shaping Europe’s modern culture, arts, politics, law, theology, science, and medicine. “By singling them out as suspects and potential enemies within, European societies are creating wide-spread instability and future uncertainty for everyone on the social, economic and political levels.” Altikriti explains.

Not only are minarets viewed as political symbols, but also radical feminists argue that they represent “male power symbols” and stands for “Islam’s oppression of women.” As this claim might sound ridiculous to some people, yet others believe it’s true. To support the ban, groups of radical feminists started a campaign and warned the public about the threats of Islam on woman’s rights. The target of their campaign was to win as much woman’s votes as possible. Their campaign was very successful as the British Times reported, one poll showed that 39% of women were in favor of the ban, but only 31% of men. Julia Werner, a housewife, says: “If we give them a minaret, they’ll have us all wearing burqas. Before you know it, we’ll have Sharia law and women being stoned to death in our streets. We won’t be Swiss any more.”[5]

Removing minarets because they symbolize “male oppression” is based on a misconception about Islam being oppressive to women. How can the building of minarets be symbols of gender discrimination? It’s hard to support the women’s right justification when minarets are built on mosques to issue a call to prayer for both men and women who choose to attend and pray. What’s truly discriminating is the banning of building those minarets. Alex Dibranco[6], Editor of change.com, is confused of how this controversy has turned into a debate about symbols of male power. “Excuse me if I doubt that the 4% of Switzerland’s population who practice Islam would be able to force the women of this secular and three-quarters Christian population” he explains. Yes, there might be individual cases in some Islamic countries at which Muslim women are not given their freedom, but there are also thousands of cases where catholic priests were guilty of molesting young boys. So, if minarets were symbols of gender discrimination, shouldn’t Catholic Churches be symbols of child abuse? Unless the Swiss government would ban all religious symbols, this argument doesn’t hold.

Supporters of the ban believe that it is their right to ban minarets in Switzerland as freedom of speech just like how some Islamic countries are free to refuse to build churches. Rupert Brown, a ban supporter says, “I am all in favor of minarets… when we see churches in Ryadh!!” Saudi Arabia does not allow religious freedom and Christian worship is forbidden. As they argue, Christians in GCC countries are viewed as visitors rather than residents, so they cannot ask for their religious rights. Why give Muslims their rights in a Christian country when they don’t give Christians their right in a Muslim country?

There are a couple of Islamic countries that reject any religious practices other than its own; however, the majority of Islamic countries built a lot of churches and include a lot of Christians as its citizens.  Iran and Saudi Arabia are extreme cases of Islamic countries where the freedom of practicing other religions is not acceptable. Therefore, referring to those two countries as a reason to ban minarets in Switzerland is irrelevant because they overlooked the rest of the Islamic world. In Lebanon and Turkey for example, there are large numbers of Church’s and mosques where people of both beliefs practice their religious customs and rituals. Unlike the supporters of the ban’s claim, Christians are not viewed as visitors in GCC countries. How can they be viewed as visitors when foreign labor constitutes the majority of those countries populations? There have been Christian churches and Christian community centers in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman since the nineties and even long before that.

In conclusion, supporters of the ban argue that minarets threaten their Identity, imposes Islamic law, promote gender discrimination and that it is a matter of freedom of speech whether to accept the ban or not. All arguments do not hold because they are based on misconceptions about Islam. Minarets are not political symbols to enforce Islamic law or male domination symbols; they are simply harmless religious structures to call Muslim men and women of all nationalities for prayer. The entire decision to hold a referendum is unacceptable because voting whether to keep minarets or remove them is just like voting whether to believe in religious freedom or refuse it. Therefore, with the banning of the minarets goes Switzerland’s religious tolerance.

Endnotes:

[1]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6936267.ece

2http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/11/2009112962232246955.html

3http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/world/europe/30swiss.html?_r=1

4http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/12/200912281637353840.html

5http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6936267.ece

6http://womensrights.change.org/blog/view/swiss_ban_minarets_is_this_about_womens_rights_or_wronging_religion

*Amna Khalid Al-Hetmi is an Information Systems junior at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.