The message from Switzerland today sums up as "no tolerance for intolerance", as the Swiss citizenry draws a line in the snow:
Switzerland 'approves minaret ban'
Over 57 percent of Swiss voters on Sunday approved a blanket ban on the construction of Muslim minarets (...) A final tally of 26 cantons indicates that 57.5 percent of the population have voted in favour of the ban on minarets (...) Only four cantons rejected the proposal brought by Switzerland's biggest party -- the Swiss People's Party (SVP), which claims that minarets symbolise a "political-religious claim to power."
As expected, a dumbfounded Swiss 'establishment' struggles to keep its collective head in its collective derriere while playing its old appeasement tricks...
[Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf] sought to reassure Swiss Muslims, saying the decision was "not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture".
Look Fraulein, I hate to burst your bubble but this is a clear cut rejection of Muslim religion and culture. As for the community, well, the Swiss have the reputation of being a decent folk, very much attached to individual rights, liberties and independence, and I'm quite confident they wouldn't single out and discriminate against any community in their midst—granted, of course, that said community clearly, honestly and verifiably (that is to say "not as Qur'an 3:28 preaches") rejects all the utterly detestable and unacceptable customs and commandements that make its religion and culture. You know, stuff like 'honor' killing, beheading 'unbelievers', hurling airliners into buildings, and generally speaking following to the letter the example of a disgusting self-proclaimed prophet of a man who, in his late fifties, managed to 'marry' a 6 years old girl and screwed1 her when she reached 9—among a whole lot of other offenses against his fellowmen.
I mean, it's Switzerland, for Heaven's sake. If Islam can't reform itself there, it's not really trying.
Swiss Muslims, unfortunately yet as predictably, play the victim card, blame it all on 'Islamophobia' and issue veiled (no pun) threats:
"The most painful thing for us is not the ban on minarets but the symbol sent by this vote. "Muslims do not feel accepted as a religious community."
That's rich, considering Islam's unmatched record in creating the most segregative states and societies along strict religious divide lines, all over the world's history, but you have to keep in mind that when it comes to Public Relations, Swiss Muslims as well as most of their western world brothers and sisters, are currently in Meccan Cuddly Fluffy Surah Mode (with unicorns and rainbows thrown in). If you know the differences between the Koran's Meccan and Medinan verses, and the historical and strategic rationale behind them, you get my meaning. If you don't, look it up because that's a bit beyond the scope of this humble post and I'm already far too easily dispersed as it is, okay?
Elham Manea, co-founder of the Forum for a Progressive Islam, added: "My fear is that the younger generation will feel unwelcome. (...)"
Or in other words: "You filty infidels fancy a bit of car-B-Q, French style? Wink-wink, nod-nod, say no more." That was a public announcement from the Forum for Progressive Islam.
... And finally, we have the usual Professional Human Rightists and staunch defenders of Democracy, except when the democratic outcome doesn't match the agenda:
Amnesty International said the vote violated freedom of religion and would probably be overturned by the Swiss supreme court or the European Court of Human Rights.
Notice that you could argue that since one can be a Muslim in, say, the Vatican or Israel yet there can be no Jew or Christian in Mecca, Amnesty International can stuff its outrage over this alleged encroachment upon the sacro-sainct Islamic freedom of religion where the desert sun never shines. Deeply, and with feelings.
Notice as well, that nothing, nowhere in this referendum forbids Muslims from practicing their religion. I know you noticed, but you're not a shill for Islamic victimhood, right?
Notice, finally, that there must be a reason why minarets, those funky phallic towers with a muezzin sitting on top, moaning "Oooh Allah is so very ackbar, can you feel it?", in the otherwise quiet Swiss landscape were deemed such a problematic issue that it 1. prompted someone to think that maybe the People should give His opinion, and 2. that someone received the legal amount of signatures required by Swiss law to call for this referendum, and 3. the People, in vast numbers, said No, we won't have it, thank you for asking.
I mean nobody is seriously thinking about a ban on churches, synagogues or American Bills of Rights—okay, maybe some people do but quite frankly all they achieve is provinding the whole mass of us with brief and cheap entertainment, save for the occasionally lucky ones who get a free seat in the Oval Office without even having to produce a birth certificate—so there must be something about the Muhammadan flock in London, Paris, Bern or Berlin that ruffles our Western liberal democracies' feathers, isn't there?
Make no mistake indeed: if any people in Western—and increasingly, I suspect, Eastern— Europe were given the same opportunity as the Swiss and were asked the same question, you'd get the same answer. So here's a tip for the European Establishment at large: if so many of your 'subjects' think there is a problem with Islam in our societies, perhaps there is indeed a, you know, problem with Islam, or at the very least a legitimate concern. So, dismissing them with the fabricated concept of 'islamophobia' or the irrelevant one of 'racism' is not only stupid and insulting: it is also becoming very risky and untenable. We the masses who happen to live with the consequences of our elites' multicultural nation-building invariably come to the following estimation of your handy work: sure, the food choice is wider and nicer but that doesn't compensate for burning cars, no-go zones, rapes, assaults and the notion that after millennia of struggle against tribalism, feudalism, theocracy and tyranny and for the defence of individualism and civic rights, you are pushing us to submit to one of the most backward, violent and oppressive religion ever to set its curse upon mankind, rather than let us reap quietly the fruits of our hard-earned Enlightenment.
The truth is, I can't really blame Muslims for being a globally intolerant bunch, as a group—that's what their holy book and their Imams teach them, and one can only blame them for not exercising more critical thinking individually—but I do blame our Western "policy makers", elected and supposedly accountable, for indulging them.
In addition to that dismal record of policy-enforced melting-pot failures from Helsinki to Palermo—again, in large part because 'integration' doesn't exist in the Islamic lingo and they've been encouraged not to learn it by our in-house Social Democrats—any European with just a slight varnish of knowledge of European history knows that they have some unfinished business with Muhammad's seides that predates by far Osama bin Laden's canard of modern oppression of the Muslims by the US-led and Zionist-inspired Crusaders of the West. We are vaguely aware that George W. Bush wasn't President of the Franks in Poitiers, yet these good proto citizen-soldiers had to fight back, and temporarily stop, decades of Islamic aggression up to the very heart of what is now France. Neither was Dubya that Spanish King who had to reconquer Spain or something. And the American Navy definitely had no battle group under the name Holy League operating in the Mediterranean in 1571. The most educated among us even know the trouble with Islam doesn't begin with Whitey 'oppressing' a bunch of happy people in turbans by building empires in North Africa or forcing them to live next to, in the Islamic parlance, 'sons of pigs and apes' by re-establishing 5,000 years old Jewish settlements in the middle-east.
In fact, considering the legions of our kin slaughtered, raped, sold into slavery or converted by the sword over the centuries of Islamic conquest, let alone the properties and cultural assets looted or destroyed, we'd appreciate it if they could keep the tone of 'Islamic grievances' down. Oh, and while we wait for that mythical but awfully silent 'majority' of moderate Muslims to stand up, speak up and kick those Very Bad Men who, we are told, 'hijacked their religion', we can't help but noticing the increasing number of women trotting about Western streets donning variants of Islamic 'extremist' attire, or other manifestation of Islamic attachment to pluralism such as burning embassies over a few cartoons or spitting on British soldiers upon their return in their hometown.
Still. Freedom of Religion. Important concept, that. That's where the Libertarian is supposed to jump in, right on cue, and assert that this Swiss business is one instance where Democracy is but the Tyranny of the Majority and how wrong it is to use the Power of the State to encroach upon Freedom of Religion™ even if the People wills it—because it won't resolve anything, dude.
I know that, because I used to harbor somewhat similar opinions, some time ago. But I watched and learned a few more things since then.
I'd still agree with that point however, as long as we were talking about any religion other than Islam (as well as a few other cults not worth mentioning, on account of being far less influential and efficient in the Conquest and Subdue Department) for the simple reason that Islam, unlike any other religion, is not just a mystical and moral framework for the individual believer: it is a collectivist and totalitarian political and religious system that aims to encompass and submit society as a whole, doesn't hide these absolutist goals (unless temporary dissimulation serves them), is actively at war with the rest of the world, and has been so ever since its inception. The minaret, in that respect, is part of the arsenal and the Islamic law specifically describes it as such by establishing precisely the rules for its edification—notably in terms of height, that must not be inferior to that of the Christian churches' bell towers for instance. And don't get me started on the fact that when they're not routinely being used as ammo stores and pillboxes in Fallujah or Gaza, mosques and their minarets far too frequently serve as propaganda & indoctrination agencies and strategic command centers all over the world.
Tell me, when was the last time you saw your local church's vicar stacking mortar rounds behind the altar while calling for the beheading of infidels "wherever ye find them" again? Yeah, me neither.
What the Swiss citizens have just done is actually a very clever and—unsurprisingly, from such an excellent people—a very diplomatic thing. The referendum calls for the ban on minarets, on account, rightfully, of being and I quote "symbols of Islamic power". But it doesn't call for a ban on mosques, the Koran, or the practice of Islam.
Ergo, what the vast majority of Swiss are saying to the minority of Swiss Muslims is: "We're fine with the personal religion thing, but you've got to drop that nasty 'submit, convert or die' habit of yours."
The proverbial ball is once again in the Islamic camp.
And the rest of Europe's unwashed masses is, once again, watching.
