The Towers Of Switzerland

The Geek has to admit he has never been comfortable when visiting Switzerland. The place is just too darn neat and orderly. He always had the sneaking suspicion that should he drop a gold bar on the street in Geneva he would return to find it not only guarded by a cop, but the cop would be ready to give a ticket for littering.

Now the Swiss government has given the Geek another reason not to spend his (nearly valueless) dollars in this land of peace, prosperity and utterly rapacious bankers. The Federal Government has shown itself to be comprised of spineless yokels bereft of both reason and a trust in the Swiss population.

Uh, kind of harsh, aren't you, Geek?

No. Not at all.

The Swiss Federals have come out against the right wing SVP sponsored referendum to ban minarets in the country. There are roughly 350,000 Muslims in a population of over seven and a half million. Most of these come from Turkey and former Yugoslavia.

Of the ninety mosques in Switzerland only two have minarets with a third planning to build one. None are used for the five times a day call to prayers.

The Swiss foreign minister threw an immediate hissy fit declaring that the referendum, if passed, would lead to a security risk by provoking Muslim anger. See this the following site: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4304838.ece.

The spokesman for the curiously named Swiss Association of Muslims for Secularism called the proposed referendum an attack on Islam and a violation of the Swiss Constitution. Well! I'll be, exclaims the Geek.

The minaret is not a requirement in Islam. There are plenty of mosques without this adornment. Eighty-seven in Switzerland alone. The first minarets didn't appear until nearly a hundred years after the death of Mohammad.

They came about because in the days before electronic amplification there was a need for height if the call to prayer was to be heard throughout the village. No problem with that. Form follows function as in so many architectural innovations.

Later as the Muslim overlordship was extended and the concept of dhimmi status was put into practice, the minaret changed its function. Rather, to err on the side of accuracy, it added an additional function--the physical demonstration to Christians and Jews of Muslim supremacy.

The SVP was historically accurate when it described the minaret as being a symbol of political status and authority. That's what it started as. And that is what it still is, particularly in multi-religious societies such as Switzerland.

The minaret controversy is not limited to Switzerland. In Germany both right wing parties and the Catholic church are exercised over the proposal to build a set of 160 foot tall minarets at the new Cologne mosque. The minarets would be taller by some feet than the spires of the famed Koln Dom.

Sweden, France, Italy, Austria and Slovania have also seen citizen protests against the building of minarets. The political elites in each of these countries have done the same as the Swiss government--run for the hills of multi-cultural celebration and hidden in the tall timbers of don't-provoke-the-Muslims-they-have-bombs.

It is in the nature of political elites to distrust the hoi polloi of their countries. (Think of the recent Irish rejection of the new EU constitution.) It is in the nature of today's political elites whether in Europe or the US to embrace the totems of globalism and the fetishes of multi-culuralism. It is also in their nature to deprecate as being in the great unwashed and unenlightened those citizens who do not slavishly agree.

Minarets are fine in the Mideast. Fine in Turkey. The Geek has seen them in their natural habitat as being one with the rest of the physical society. Likewise he has seen the onion domes of Russia and Eastern Europe. They look fit and proper there.

But, a towering phallic symbol in a Swiss village? Give me a break! Sez the Geek.

And, he adds, show me how to join up with the SVP