Hey, I was just askin’. Perhaps they could have worded it a bit better.
I don’t give a damn if it’s offensive to Muslims. Lots of things are offensive to them.
Agreed with everything else, though.
Sure, hope I didn’t sound unkind–I didn’t intend to. Just posting in haste.
I’m not sure why you assume that they wanted to word it “a bit better.” That is, perhaps the point was to be offensive and prejudicial?
Superfluous, do you think there’s no justification for the offense in this case?
Sure. But I generally don’t. See below.
[quote]
Wouldn’t it be an even greater tragedy to lose the culture of Galileo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Descartes, and Beethoven?
Even if there were a risk of this doomsday scenario happening…
What would be so bad if the people living a century from now in the area currently known as France were, in their time, to call it something else, to eat foods and listen to music and speak languages all derived from the customs currently prevalent in areas of the world other than France (or even entirely anew)? As long as no one’s being coerced by threat of law or violence into doing things they don’t want to do or abstaining from peaceful things they do want to, things seem peachy to me. (And vice versa: once people’s liberties to act how they like (drawing or not from whatever influences they like) start being suppressed, then things stop being peachy)
If the people living in continental Europe a century from now generally don’t care for Beethoven’s music at all, fine by me. People’s aesthetic tastes are not a moral matter, nor one that calls for regulation by law. Live and let live.
Did they? Everything I’ve read on this subject seems to indicate that they made no attempt whatsoever to pretend it was an aesthetic or architectural argument. They seem to have made no bones about the fact that it was entirely about suppressing Islam.
It only seems to be (certain) Dopers suggesting that there was a more benign motive involved.
I didn’t say they WANTED to word it a bit better. I said maybe they COULD HAVE worded it a bit better. I have no idea if they meant to be offensive, but if they didn’t, I suspect they could have been a bit less like a bull in a china shop.
I guess that would be me. This is getting out of hand. I was simply trying to think of the closest example I could think of, which was the Santa Fe ordinance. Possibly people are reading more into my comments than as intended.
Right, but I think those who promoted this measure wanted to be offensive bulls in the china shop. Have you seen the posters used in this campaign that were linked to various posts above?
Moreover, mere wording can’t disguise prejudice.
Well if you look over Švejk’s posts back on page 2 he (she?) was saying that they were deliberately trying to pursue some kind of technical argument that what was being banned was a building rather than a religion or religious practice in order to mask incursion of state into religious matters. (This entirely from memory so you might want to review the posts themselves.) I myself have no knowledge any strategy beyond what’s in the articles linked to and a couple of more recent ones.
Yeah I do, but offense on its own shouldn’t be a reason to agree or disagree with a law. I don’t agree with this law because it serves no other purpose except preventing mosks from being clearly visible. On the opposite side, in my country we’ve still got blasphemy laws on the books, which are only about preventing offense. Neither is useful and both are bigoted, in my opinion.
A potential check on the majority will is described in this article.
If these people were really serious about the threat of Islamism in their country - which if it’s anything like over here in the Netherlands, is hysterically overstated - they wouldn’t pick such a stupid policy. There’s plenty of stuff wrong with Islam, but you’re not going to do anything about it by banning a bunch of towers. I have the same sort of problem with my native Geert Wilders and his stupid grandstanding.
Let them have their towers, but attack the bullshit. But ofcourse you can’t legislate against bullshit. You need actual arguments to fight it, and you need to have public arguments to have any effect. Preventing people from displaying their beliefs is not a good way to act when you want them to change their opinions. Of course, if your actual goal is to make people feel so unwelcome they’ll leave the country “voluntarily” this would be only the first step. Stay tuned for more news from happy multicultural Europe!
Does to.
Cultures have no moral claim to protection. It’s individual’s liberties which carry that moral warrant. If “protecting existing culture” comes at cost to the latter, then “protecting existing culture” is a stupid and immoral thing to do, just as legislating that Americans can listen to jazz but not mariachi would be a stupid and immoral thing to do.
Let me reword that last line, which got caught up in editing: “…just as legislating that Americans be forced to publicly prefer jazz to mariachi would be a stupid and immoral thing to do.”
Wow that sucks. I love minarets, they look awesome.
Really, pray tell what logical train of thought unrelated to mere religious and ethnic bigotry supports banning minarets?
Churches already have steeples.
If one is thinking of keeping the supposed story book image re architecture one can rather merely require religious buildings have steeples in keeping with the surrounding architecture. Rather simple and without the fundamental bigotry of banning minarets. The minaret will then look like a steeple, except perhaps with a crescent.
If one is thinking of keeping an architectural heritage, then … well a similar rule (applied equally) is of similar ease and efficaciousness.
There is no logical “cultural protection” aspect here that does not involve simple racism and religious bigotry. Simple and primitive tribalism of religious bigotry. Cultural protection? Ban the Brown Hordes eh? (except of course the Turks and Bosniacs are white, but…); this kind of fear-mongering already happened in Europe relative to the “unassimilatable Jews” - the hook nosed hordes. The language and efforts bear a striking resemblance. Europe does not need this again.
Good thing too - direct democracy on minority rights without constitution-like protections makes as much sense as an untrammeled vote by three wolves and two sheep on what’s for dinner tonight.
Quite, and indeed “protecting a culture” in this fashion (versus say simply supporting language education as in Quebec, etc [ahem well not so simple but…]) is almost invariably merely an attempt a palatable gloss on gross bigotry
Added re my own thought:
This by the way would strike me as a far more coherent measure (even given that much of Swiss urban development ain’t the tourist picture book view.
But if we’d just eliminate this pesky “religious freedom” business, everyone would live together in peace and harmony! No way could that backfire!
What you said was:
In reference to the idea of “religious freedom”.
Non-believers of course should be as protected as believers. But we should no more get to infringe on the rights of religious believers than they should get to infringe on ours.