A whole religion, excited to see you?
Big news in the academy: Mega-thought-leader and renowned appreciator of the female . . . . perspective Professor Glenn Reynolds rejects views of Freud:
THIS IS INTERESTING: Women lead Swiss in vote to ban minarets. Why would women, in particular, be opposed to the visible spread of Islam in Europe?
Who said anything about Islam?! They banned MINARETS!!
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It may not have anything to do with cigar-like objects. The Swiss are a fairly financially aware people. The Dubai debacle is just the tip of the Islamic-finance iceberg. The Swiss may suspect that the minaret builders will default on their debts.
Roger Simon seems also misinformed (or maybe just missed the point)
He said “Swiss feminists were apparently in the lead in the “Stop the Minarets” campaign. No surprise there really. Salman Rushdie is not the only one to read Islamic texts (and behavior) as an assault on women. Anyone with eyes open, certainly an intelligent female, would. If only our own feminists could get off their reactionary multi-culturalist behinds in this regard.”
When you realize that the objection by feminists is to minarets and their phallic shape, and not Islam, the reality comes clear.
Since the prime objective of feminism is to “liberate” women from the “oppression” of husbands and children, the fact that American feminists haven’t noticed this issue is no surprise at all. Men are ALL pigs, according to feminism, and to single out one group from the many would take focus away from the Violence Against Women Act, which has proven thus far to be the most efficient means of achieving their actual goals here in the US.
VAWA is due to be reauthorized in 2010, and this time around is facing some serious challenges. Feminists can’t let that happen, as it has only eliminated thousands of family units, and their goal is millions. This is not even to mention the legions of feminists it employs, who otherwise would not have jobs at all.
They just don’t have any time to concern themselves with Swiss buildings.
I don’t see anything wrong with excluding Islamic minarets from Swiss society. Maybe the open, tolerant, secular Swiss nation is just not “for” Muslims.
FWIW, I think that this is also bigotry, similar but less onerous than the Saudi ban on non-Muslims in Mecca/Medina.
And its one of the main reasons that even as a libertarian, I’m not a fan of direct democracy (AKA the tyranny of the masses.)
Western liberal democracy notwithstanding, the people of Switzerland have their own culture. Thus they are able to determine whether or not minarets can be built as part of islamic religious structures. They may also dictate the kinds of garments to be worn on the street. They can determine where all children in their country may or may not attend school, and what those children will be taught in those schools. And so on.
In short, these practices are hardly different in kind, style or severity from similar cultural controls in just about every islamic society on the face of this planet.
Now that I have personally met Aziz Poonawalla, I have taken some interest in his particular indian islamic sect, the Dawoodi Bohra. I admire him and them greatly. Moreover, if all Islam were practiced like that of the Dawoodi Bohra, or like the Ba’hai faith — I would have no objection whatsoever to Islam.
But even if all Islam were like these above-cited examples of more or less inoffensive manifestations of the parent faith, I would reserve the right to each of the world’s numerous separate and independent cultures to determine which outsiders are permitted in their presence and the degree to which they should be accepted by the cultural majority.
Does this mean that Iran ought to persecute its active Ba’hai population — as that country has done for more than 150 years? No. But as an autonomous culture and society, the majority there have a right to choose either tolerance or intolerance. Intolerance in the end mostly backfires on its practitioners. But you cannot deny that they have the right to poison themselves, it they wish to inflict upon themselves that sort of behavior.
Would I personally ban minarets? Certainly not as a religious manifestation. But I am extraordinarily picky and fault-finding with what I consider bad architecture. And if a building looks out of place to me, I would in fact tear it down as offensive to my sense of aesthetics. But I guess that would include more roman catholic basilicas than islamic mosques.
And while I am on this topic: I am one of those Americans who favors levying property taxes on religious as well as secular properties. Why should my wife and I have to pay property taxes on our bluffside chalet, when St Mary’s of Pine Bluff — just one mile down the road from us in the direction of the Village of Cross Plains — doesn’t pay one damned dime of such taxes? I don’t mind anyone and everyone exercising their own religion, just so I don’t have to pay their share of the taxes on their real estate.
What’s fair is fair.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
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