In a racially motivated divisive move as campaigned by SVP, minaret, a component of Islamic mosque architecture is banned by Swiss voters, likening them to missiles(!) and further drawing the lines between communities and sending a clear message that Islam is not welcomed in Switzerland. Who can now deny the powerful symbolic nature of architecture?
ap | youtube
In a racially motivated divisive move as campaigned by SVP, minaret, a component of Islamic mosque architecture is banned by Swiss voters, likening them to missiles(!) and further drawing the lines between communities and sending a clear message that Islam is not welcomed in Switzerland. Who can now deny the powerful symbolic nature of architecture?
ap | youtube
22 Comments
"neutral" swiss show fucked-up side.
expectedly enough and religious pride aside, the ban is getting a lot of support from secular turkish groups both in turkey and in europe. reminding to their supporters that it is against the law to build a christian church in saudi arabia.
but i believe we must hold european countries to more inclusive standards where they become strong and forceful supporters of human rights and freedom of religious expression.
however, without a doubt, xenophobia is on the rise across the continents and similar initiatives are on the pipeline for some other european countries.
so unfortunate..its actually shocking!
an entire nation bans a building type
correction...you can have a Mosque without a Minaret so it is not a complete building type..... regardless it still sucks
Seems like a perfect example of dealing with an issue in a completely wrong way. The minaret of a mosque is certainly a powerful symbol of Islam which is itself much more than simply a religion as it fully dictates a way of life from politics, economics, and social interaction to education, eating, and family organization. Such a clumsy law of simply banning minarets will backfire, leading to effects not intended. While in the far past, depriving a population of certain symbolic references could in-fact cause the eventual decay of the social organizations based on the symbols, today's info-sphere precludes such possibility. And even worse, given the predisposition of much of Islam, these actions fit easily into being manipulated and turned into further ammo for the fundamentalists.
well said AxioJohn.
Its clear that Islam and the West are incompatible and Western nations are not required to host people who do not want to adopt their host nation's customs. In Switzerland's case the tradition of interest driven banking is completely incompatible with Sharia Law governing finance, and Hawala banking is illegal in most western nations but it's practice is widespread. Tax avoidance and money laundering are rampant within Europe's shadow Muslim banking system and should not be tolerated any more than mainstream tax dodgers are tolerated. The west can remain open and free without pandering a single culture's desire to live in a free society but demand of it the special considerations as fundamental rights. Cheers to the Swiss for standing up for themselves and their Swiss identity even if it's a silly rule. I agree the minarets are a powerful symbol of Islamic culture but the vote is even more symbolic if one can read between the lines. When will Islam be happy, when Europe is 20, 30 or 40% Muslim? How often must the west feed the crocodile before it is content?
swiss voters are reacting to the failed assimilation of muslim communities in their country.
this is a growing trend: many europeans perceive that their cities are being "settled" by fast-growing muslim communities who don't seem interested in assimilating into the native culture (eg. geert wilders: http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/wilders/2009/02022009.htm)
the situation is currently awkward, and could become a political trainwreck somewhere down the line.
it is an interesting topic, to say the least...
more than a dozen major arab and other muslim country banks have branches in switzerland. 99% of the muslim immigrant community either do business with european banks or use their national banks which operate with the same rules & regulations as the other so called western banks. i know for sure there are half a dozen popular turkish banks in germany with neighborhood branches. these are all western system banks with international trading capabilities and many european customers.
swiss cheese, if you are going to argue via banking, you have big holes in your case..
it is so ironic, you speak of honest banking system when secretive swiss banking was the address for all kinds of tax dodging up until last year, and was mainly responsible for switzerland's powerful economic existence hiding dark closet money for a fee...
also there is a competitive banking on the rise. but that is just a competition for business. why it is wrong for muslims to do business with other muslims when they prefer it that way? these banks you are talking about do not exist illegally. here is a related article for the banks you are talking about.
http://www.cpifinancial.net/v2/Magazine.aspx?v=1&aid=384&cat=IBF&in=5
we as the so called westerners, explore doing business and literally captured most of the business in uae and other middle eastern countries and why now cry 'not in my back yard' when they compete with our banks?
~~~
geert wilders is a proven provocateur and a racist. he is such a racist that united kingdom banned him from entering the british isles.
just recently he wanted to come to turkey. although turks were nicer to him not banning his entry, nobody accepted his call for a meeting. the way things are looking, he better stay put in holland where he has large number of supporters.
it is a very interesting topic indeed. these are post colonial times as well as big refugee populations settling wherever they can eat. europeans naturally are crying the invaded populace when they freely colonized much of the world in 16 th century on and robbed people from their resources and dignity.
there is a huge impact on us architects, urban designers and planners to think of open cities where people can co exist and live with dignity.
we all very well know what happened when one religion was discriminated against. the memories of europe under nazi movement are only too fresh. who guarantees this would not develop into a version of that genocide?
we need to make human rights and co-existence a priority. all sides have areas that need improvements.
agreed, geert wilders has extreme right views that promote racism.
having lived in various parts of europe, i've seen an increased hesitation among europeans to integrate muslim populations. "open cities where people can co exist and live with dignity" sounds great on paper, but try selling that to a native population who believe they're being invaded.
in terms of european immigration policy, the swiss vote is just the tip of the iceburg. hopefully open-mindedness and reasonable decisions will prevail.
sectional, i agree with you too.
i know open city sounds great on paper but that's the huge challenge we have to deal with as designers and architects. we have to sell that to people who are hard headed in opposing it.
here is a related area we can all browse;
http://www.iabr.nl/EN/open_city/index.php
Issues of architecture and urbanism aside, it really is a shame how rootedly conservative, intolerant and largely racist the European public became in the last few decades. European public must figure out a way to come to terms with the fact that the world will become progressively cosmopolitan and as the economical imbalance between the so called west and the rest of the world becomes more pronounced, immigration will increase and the level of exposure and interaction will become even more unavoidable. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned from urban centers of the USA.
wow ok... that's some generalisation about europe there.
this is one of the biggest debates going on in europe at the moment, and the approaches across different countries vary widely.
Actually in the end geert wilders did come to the UK, and although i don’t agree with his views i was glad about that because the more discussion we have around these issues the better. There is a real problem in the UK: people are so afraid or being branded racist or intolerant the real tricky issues don’t get discussed.
Recently there was a big debate about the bbc allowing the leader of the right wing british national party onto a political debate on the tv, some said that he should be denied this opportunity because of the party’s racist approach... in the end he went on and was roundly denounced by all the sane people on the panel and in the audience. anyway, that’s a bit beside the point...
I think sometimes there is a slight misunderstanding with the political systems in some European countries which leads to the rise of right wing fundamentalists being overstated. As some countries, like Germany and the Netherlands have proportional representation there is a wide range of political parties represented in government. This leads to much more diversity than you have in British or American politics.
Having said all that i was pretty shocked to read about this ban – as mentioned in one of the posts above it is another example of avoiding the real issues...
some good analysis of the situation:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/intolerance-european-style.html
orhan, out of curiosity, what is your definition of "open city"?
my definition of "open city"?
quickly answering to a nice but general question;
visually speaking, from jan duiker to the 'aim' of team 10 to textures of mumbai's slum dog millionaire argument and to 'what the future will bring.'
ideologically; the similar.
there has to be social acceptance, employment and dialog between communities. schools, services, social networks and spaces shared by all, a society of 'very' flat pyramid.
we need to work for it. there is plenty of work for architects in it. we are not accustomed or educated to look that way. we feed on iconic buildings. we are not looking beyond the tired models of 19-20 th century cities. if the world is two thousand dubais, architects worked on all of them.
in open cities, we are working with an organism like growth and exchange. fair trade. this we should think of as our unifying umbrella.
there are cities do these to certain extend.
but unfortunately many cities in north america namely the us, are not prone to public use. many downtowns close at 5 and when people get home and shot their doors until the next working day, which is usually 8 hours later.
all our work and efforts are not matching or providing us with better engagement with the city. we not only want to close our doors and windows to outside, we don't want anybody to make any noise out there either.
i can go on. but you get the idea i hope. i know i forgot a lot of other imagery and day to day details and road map to happiness on 'justly' residing in cities!
oh, as an active critic, i am very opposed to corporate and heavily monitored open spaces sold as public spaces to get the building permit.;.)
Belle, you keep talking about the "real" issues, what are those real issues you do not feel comfortable expressing because you feel like you will be branded as racist? First of all, mainland Europe is certainly different than the UK, but isn't that the main divide in the EU to begin with? My experience with people across the board, educated, uneducated, urban, rural, French, German, Italian etc. has been actually quite similar in regards to issues of discrimination and racism (again this might come across as a huge generalization to some, and of course there are plenty of exceptions, but you can feel the general political mood of a place by talking to people and reading mainstream papers). There's this popular understanding in Europe that countries at large define an ethnicity and a cultural homogeneity as opposed to sharing of values. There's also the political reality that you cannot deny, with the exception of Spain, almost all mainland European countries are ruled by some sort of right wing ideology, some more conservative than others. But the one unifying aspect of all these parties (and they are grouped according to political orientation ie. christian democrats etc. as opposed to country within the european parliament) is their general intolerance and unrealistic denial of immigration and their issues. Look at how Sarkozy got elected despite all the stuff he said about African immigration and rallies in Paris? Look at Merkel- she built an entire foreign policy debate based on anti-immigration (particularly anti-turkish) and won the elections recently for the second time. Look at Italy, everytime I go, I see Mussolini cds and DVDs on the street laying around so casually. Look at Austria, it's a country so xenophobic they actually elected one of those ultra-nationalist freaks as their prime minister and had to back off after much disgruntlement from other countries. And he mysteriously died in a car crash afterwards. So what I am refering to is particularly the intolerance of the so called mainstream conservatives that rule Europe now, NOT the ultra-nationalist nutjobs that they seem to make occasional alliances with. It's time for European politicians to wake up and come up with constructive strategies to integrate immigration in a democratic way into their countries.
And Swiss Cheese's opinion is a prime example of the kind of prejudice I am talking about.
Hello go
Sorry, i though that we were all (barring swiss cheese above) in agreement about what the real issues are! The fundamental discussion about what it means when the make up of our societies broadens and challenges us to think about our national identity. Whether national identity is a useful concept at all. The arguments between multiculturalism and assimilation. How to tackle fundamentalism wherever it exists.
I have watched many debates in the uk over the last few years, for example whether it is appropriate for a school teacher to wear a burqa or veil which covers their face, whether sharia law can be ‘legal’ and so on, and i find that the discussion gets polarised very quickly and tends to become an excuse for the people at either end of the spectrum to rehearse the same old arguments. There is no middle ground or proper discussion because the extremists on both sides grab onto any moderate opinions and try to use them to their advantage.
My experience is generally limited to the uk, and i live in London in a very diverse area so my understanding of the issue across Europe is probably skewed, so i accept your point about the trend for conservatism across Europe - we may even have a conservative government here next year!
(but i still disagree that you can define europe as being largely racist)
Mr Ayyüce:
"europeans naturally are crying the invaded populace when they freely colonized much of the world in 16 th century on and robbed people from their resources and dignity."
True or not, what is the relevance of this assertion?
"we all very well know what happened when one religion was discriminated against. the memories of europe under nazi movement are only too fresh."
The Nazi Holocaust was directed at an ethnicity, not a religion. The use of "Jew" as both an ethnic and a religious description may be confusing to a child, but not to an educated adult. To discriminate against a race is utterly unacceptable. To discriminate against aspects of a culture is in many cases justified (there is no need to rehearse here the barbaric practices found in Islamic culture, especially since "honor killings" have become such a disturbingly common feature of immigrant communities in the West).
"who guarantees this would not develop into a version of that genocide?"
This is sky-high rhetoric so ignorant, offensive, and irresponsible that I cannot even respond.
"but i believe we must hold european countries to more inclusive standards"
And why is that? Your putatively multiculturalist, politically correct agenda tacitly infantilizes Islamic cultures and nations by allowing them to adhere to lesser standards, morally and intellectually.
The ban on minarets is, in itself, obviously trivial. The important message being given is that you can build a mosque and practice your faith, but you should do it with appropriate discretion and politeness, always acknowledging that you are living in a different culture. That is precisely the standard to which I hold myself when I, as a Westerner, am residing in or visiting non-Western cultures. The multiculturalists who insist on the importance of preserving the integrity of non-Western cultures need to acknowledge that Western culture has the same right to preserve its own traditions and practices (which are in many cases the direct or indirect reasons that these immigrants find the West a preferable place to live). As someone else here has pointed out, you cannot build a church in many Islamic countries, let alone a synagogue. You want to see minarets in your city? Then go and live in an Islamic country.
In case you are wondering, I'm white, male, middle-class, native English-speaking, gentile, atheist, aged between 18 and 55. Fire away.
I personally think it's really worrisome, I mean Geneva's main mosque was vandalised and other attacks were registered :( that's how it all ignited back in 1936...
gabsvillalobos:
"Geneva's main mosque was vandalised and other attacks were registered :( that's how it all ignited back in 1936..."
Let us keep a sense of proportion. The "vandalism" of the mosque in Geneva was someone throwing a pot of pink paint at it. That is indeed a childish and disrespectful (and illegal) gesture, but it is not Kristallnacht.
These frequent comparisons between the minaret ban and the Nazis are extremely counterproductive and troubling. Aside from trivializing the Holocaust, you forfeit the possibility of being taken seriously in this (or any) debate.
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