The prohibition to build any further minarets confronts Switzerland with a big problem because it is neither in accordance with the Swiss constitution nor with human rights. But why then did 57% of the population vote for its ban?
Minarets, which have the same relevance in Islamic culture as church towers and their bells in the Christian world, are distinctive free-standing structures unique to the architecture of Islamic mosques.
The problem was never about the minarets. They were taken as a symbol of other parts of the Islamic religion that concerned the founders of the initiative, like burqas, which are outer garments worn by Islamic women, the sharia, which is the Islamic law, and forced marriages.
The legislatures wanted to achieve a signaling effect and a discussion about these topics. These are also the strongest points of criticism of the opponents to the new law, because the initiative aimed more to attack the Islamic culture than to forbid minarets.
Anyhow, this initiative aims to stop the feared Islamization of Switzerland, and warn the Muslims who don’t want to integrate themselves. Many people argue that Muslims don’t need minarets to act out their belief, or that it’s forbidden to build churches in some Islamic countries as well.
Muslims may not be limited to worship their belief without minarets, but it is unfortunate that our population set itself on one level with countries with more or less dictatorial forms of government. It’s also regrettable that the campaign had been led in very populist and fearful techniques. The placards and slogans used were racist.
Switzerland proved once more that it has a problem with the integration of religious minorities. We must take the results of this vote seriously because there’s obviously a massive insecurity among the Swiss population. The initiative party knew to take advantage of this part of the population. The opponents of the initiative, who outnumbered them by far, were not aware of this fear. Hence not all of their supporters against the initiative voted.
