Bomber's Blog - The War on News - 10pm tonight Sky 89 & Freeview 21
Bomber's Blog - the war on news is on tonight, 10pm simulcast on Sky 89 and Freeview 21. It's replayed on Triangle 9.45pm Wednesday. It will be posted on Tumeke and Youtube on Friday and posted up on Scoop in the weekend.
posted by Bomber @ 7:31 am
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Minarets 'don't fit' with cow bells, horns
PARIS - Think Alpine horns, cowbells, snow-capped mountains and no minarets, that's how Swiss right-wingers want their country's landscape to look.
And they want it codified by referendum.
It is a proposal that is stirring fierce debate about the country's reputation for tolerance as well as concern about potential Muslim backlash abroad, similar to the outrage triggered by cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark.
Those behind the initiative include 35 politicians in the country's biggest political party, the Swiss Peoples Party (SVP), which has two ministers in the coalition Government and 55 of the 200 seats in the National Council, the larger of the two chambers in the Swiss Parliament.
They argue that minarets, slender towers topped with a crescent that are attached to mosques, are a symbol of "Islamist circles" seeking to widen their influence in Switzerland and, supposedly, impose Islamic law. The minaret, they say, poses a risk to community relations.
They say they do not oppose mosques or Muslims' rights to worship. Instead, they argue, minarets fall under article 72 of the Swiss constitution, which allows the authorities to take measures to maintain peace among different faiths.
"The minaret has nothing to do with religion," says SVP legislator Ulrich Schluer, who is president of the referendum campaign committee. "It's not mentioned in the Koran or other important Islamic texts.
It just symbolises a place where Islamic law is established."
In order to force the referendum, the campaign has to muster 100,000 signatures by November 2008.
The Swiss have a long history of referendums, some of them touching on constitutional issues but others dealing with relatively minor issues.
This move, though, has touched a painful nerve. While Switzerland is proud of its long tradition as a place of tolerance and a refuge for the persecuted, it is also a deeply conservative country where many fear the national identity is at threat from immigration, for foreigners now account for more than a fifth of the population of 7.5 million.
And, as in other European countries, 9/11 has bred religious tensions.
Representatives of the Muslim community are stunned by the referendum idea.
"As an organisation that is helping Muslims to integrate and become model citizens, we are shocked by this initiative," says Adel Mejri, president of the League of Swiss Muslims.
Mejri said the initiative was absurd, because Swiss Muslims did not even consider minarets to be a priority.
Only two out of more than 140 mosques in Switzerland have a minaret, one in Geneva, the other in Zurich, and neither is used to make the traditional loudspeaker call to prayer.
CHEESE ON TOAST OR WELSH RABBIT?
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