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”.

Ali argues that Islam must not only be perceived as a religion but as a recipe on life – which includes how the relationship between the state and the individual should be regulated, how believers should treat unbelievers and how to enforce such rules. Islam is therefore also a political ideology that claims it is a better ruling-system than other forms of government. She emphasizes that Islam can’t involve itself to be democratic. If so, Islam is no longer Islam.
Because Islam also is a political ideology it has its political symbols: Minarets, the crescent, the head scarf and the sword.  So a minaret symbolizes something more than just to be a place for praying. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is convinced that political Islam is what the Swiss’ objected to.   

Like the rest of us, Swiss are also affected by the media’s- constant images of war and unrest in Islamic countries -and 9/11 is glued to everyone’s memory on what extremists are capable of doing. Many of us think first of Islam when the word terrorism is brought up in a conversation - Muslims in Europe really have an image problem.

There are many reasons for this image problem and one cannot sweep under the carpet that there are misconception on both sides. But when we are talking about rational fear of Islam, I think that what first comes to mind is how many feel that Islam is not in favor of democracy and freedom of speech. A good, and not so old, example of this was the stir that came because of the Muhammad cartoons. The cartoons originally appeared in a Danish newspaper Jylland-posten in 2005. Jyllands-Posten asked cartoonists to "draw the Prophet as they saw him", as an assertion of free speech and to reject pressure by Muslims groups to respect their sensitivities.
The Muhammad cartoons caused a lot of turmoil and many Muslims found the cartoons extremely offensive, racist and humiliating. Other critiques of the cartoons claimed that freedom of expression should not involve or be abused to provoke hatred and division between societies. That’s what the cartoons did but also shed light on another issue – Integration: One should be respectful and cautious to new inhabitants… but how much should the receiving community compromise on their own values and standards when they are receiving foreigners, immigrants and refugees. And how much should immigrants have to give up?

These questions will always be a challenge to answer. For Switzerland – minarets are hard to swallow   - a challenge - and in such a scale that they denied them an equal opportunity to build on their religious buildings. There is not only Swiss Muslims that reacted to this ban but also the biggest Swiss Jewish communities – saying a minaret ban infringed religious freedom, a concept enshrined in the Swiss constitution .

So out of rational fear, Swiss denied Muslims the same right which they themselves hold so dear.  I find it to be a great paradox to fight for equal rights and at the same time deny it to those we suspect does not hold these views.  One cannot compromise on freedom of speech or freedom of religion.  We may not always like what comes along with such constitutional rights, but you cannot pick and choose over who should enjoy them or not.

Red: Read the third and last part of this article in our next issue.

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