The Swiss people made their opinion heard across the world when they went to the polls and voted for the initiative to ban minarets in Switzerland. The condemnation from neighboring countries came quickly from the EU countries all accusing Switzerland for violating a basic human right: freedom of religion.
But how should we interpret the Swiss vote?
- Xenophobia: The Swiss voted for the initiative because they are intolerant, afraid of any foreign group that settle in their country, or/ and are willing to violate basic human rights for the sake of preserving Swiss values.
- Rational Fear of Islam: The Swiss vote reflects a general western perception that Muslims are not really integrating, that they want to live in their own communities with as little as possible interference from the national secular law and that they have some sort of hidden agenda to Islamize every country they settle in.
- The failure of Equality and Emancipation: With the end of the Cold War the disappearance of ideological suppression removed the lid from national and tribal confrontation. Today we are on a daily basis confronted through the news by ethnic wars in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. This has created a sense of disappointment over humanity and has led to disillusionment about social change - Kenan Malik
A XENOPHOBIC VOTE?
The referendum was a matter of voting yes or no on allowing a religious building construction, the minaret, to be raised. Initially, one would assume that the debate would focus on the esthetical and practical meaning of allowing 126 mosques to raise minarets on to their buildings. But because of the referendum’s origin, the debate was intentionally steered towards being a matter of protecting Switzerland against Muslims, who allegedly, are aiming to Islamize Switzerland.
Muslims in Switzerland are a fragmented community consisting of Turks, Bosnians, Albanians etc who have their own mosques and follow their own traditions. For example, there are huge differences between Lebanese Muslims and Muslims from Saudi Arabia - if you take a trip to Saudi Arabia and to Lebanon you will see how differently they run their countries, practice their religion and how differently their women are treated.
Saudi Arabia for example – perhaps the crown example that honors all our prejudice against Islam, where men and women are strictly separated, where women are covered up from top to toe and are B-citizens. But if you travel to Lebanon, Syria or Jordan you will see women more liberated and with equal rights.
These differences were not absorbed by Swiss’ media during the many debates toppled with the people’s lack of knowledge about Islam with Islamophobic sentiments, which is much more widespread than observers had thought. However, those who favored the ban were very much conscious about how to exploit this situation.
At the same time, the mainstream political parties failed to take this referendum seriously. The consequence was that SVP and its followers got all the political space they needed to play the terrorism card. Playing on humans fear is an old trick and a very effective one. However this seemed to take the Swiss government by surprise and turned into a hard lesson to be learned. It is also a lesson to be learned for other European countries as well.
The situation is probably similar across Europe; the success of far-right parties in the recent European parliament elections certainly suggests so. The only surprise from this election was how surprised we were.
It has to be clear that right-wing parties’ successes, like in Switzerland, are reflecting public sentiments and that integration is perhaps going in the wrong direction or/and that one need to be as peaceful aggressive and public as the right- wing parties to condemn and expose racist/xenophobic acts:
Intolerance is one thing that lies at the heart of Europe’s most ubiquitous human rights violation- discrimination. Discrimination tears societies apart. Of all continents, Europe should know a thing or two about this (Claudio Cordon- senior director of Amnesty International).
Read part two of this article next week.
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Swiss minaret ban poster
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Follow us next week for part two of this article:
Rational Fear of Islam?
Ayan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch intellectual, feminist and activist, is one that has openly showed her support of the Swiss ban on minarets. In her article titled “Swiss ban on minarets was a vote for tolerance and inclusion” she supported the result and said it must be interpreted as an act of inclusion and second that the vote revealed a big gap between “how the Swiss people and the Swiss elite judge political Islam”.
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