Why is it Switzerland’s responsibility to help? Why is it always Western Democracies that are supposed to accommodate others? Maybe Saudi Arabia can change to not oppress women and stop supporting radical madrases. Maybe Syria can change and not send money to the families of suicide bombers. Maybe Hamas and the PLO can change and negotiate a settlement that will benefit all sides. Maybe the people of Iran can change and kick out their nutty rulers. Maybe the people of Afghanistan can change and hand over the mass murderer hiding among them (I’d trade Cheney for him). Maybe the oil sheiks can change and stop buying million dollar watches and start building an infrastructure.
Christianity still sucks, but it did go through a reformation and adopt a few modern ideas. What is really racist is infantalizing Muslims and saying that they don’t have the ability and responsibility to clean up their part of the mess we are in.
I’m not actually suggesting that it is Switzerland’s responsibility to help. But it is Switzerland’s responsibility to adhere to its own constitutional principles (including the human rights treaties it has signed). And it is Switzerland’s responsibility to treat all of its citizens equally–including its Muslim citizens.
Don’t you agree?
These are all complicated situations that I can’t really address in a short space. But what I can say is that I’d like to see all of these things occur (and I’d also like to see Israel do its share on the Palestinian situation which it manifestly does not do).
But let me ask you again–what good will prejudicial attitudes toward all Muslims do to bring these changes about? As citizens of Western democracies we can’t do very much to affect the political process of other countries. Yet, by and large the policies of our country have worsened the Middle East situation: for example, the way in which we’ve supported Israel has aggravated tensions in the Middle East and has made Israel more aggressive and reactionary; and Saudi Arabia has long been a key US ally. Some of these relationships date back to imperialism when it was the British rather than the US exerting this kind of influence in the region.
Do you mean Osama bin Laden? I don’t think anyone thinks he is in Afghanistan–he is believed to be in Pakistan (by those who don’t he’s dead).
Sure, or we can move toward greener energy altogether which would reduce the authoritarianism that tends to come with petroleum economies everywhere from Saudi Arabia, to Iran, to Russia, and even Alaska.
But how does prejudice toward all Muslims or the enactment of unconstitutional laws in Western democracies help us to do that?
I’m not sure if not allowing minarets to be built is not treating it’s citizens fairly. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that an action justified by religion is more valid than that for a secular reason. I’m sure they would not allow a tall tower topped by a statue of Sponge Bob Square Pants to be erected either.
But it is interesting that you criticize Switzerland for not living up to it’s standards rather than the large number of Muslim countries that have such low standards. Again, I think this is racist. We hold the nice, white Swiss to a different standard than we do for people from Muslim countries. How can we expect those brown people to treat women fairly, or allow other religions to operate freely, or have democratic elections?
Maye the Swiss are nervous about having people arrive so fast that their society changes to adopt values they do not share. There is no moral imperative for the Swiss to allow anyone to immigrate nor for them to upend their society to accommodate new comers. I’d rather have an insular Switzerland than a homogenized world where we live down to the lowest common denominator.
ETA:
Well that makes a big difference then, because Pakistan is not a Muslim country. I stand corrected.
Sorry, I left off the irony flag. I was responding to the charge that OBL is hiding in Pakistan rather than Afghanistan as though that made any difference to my point that a Muslim country is harboring a mass murderer.
The problem is that if this huge number, of moderate, liberal, Muslims does indeed exist, it is mighty quiet. What I see is Muslims in London, for example, shouting in their thousands for the murder of Danish cartoonists. I see them holding up signs congratulating the murderer of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh. I assume there was a counter-demonstration against murdering cartoonists who are just using their constitutional right to satirize? I assume that these hundreds of thousands of moderate Muslims showed up to demonstrate in favour of western freedom in such overwhelming numbers that they just blew away this small crowd of unrepresentative fanatics? Funny, but nobody at any of these demos ever sees representatives of this allegedly huge group of moderate Muslims.
I do not, as you imply, refuse to recognize that liberal Muslims dedicated to western freedoms do exist.
This is precisely why I have drawn this analogy with the Nazi party and its individual members. I am certain, absolutely certain, that if you had travelled in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, you could have met card-carrying Nazis who were some of the nicest people you would want to meet. You might even discover that they had firecely argued against anti-semitism at party meetings.
I am right now in the process of reading “The Third Reich at War” and it is interesting to note that many Germans, many of them Nazi party members, participated in the 1939 pressure campaign that forced even to almighty Nazi government to back down and stop gassing German mental patients.
For that matter, there must have been good people who served Joe Stalin. It is the movement as a whole that concerns us, not the fact that not every one of its members is a fanatic with blood dripping from his teeth.
What YOU fail to realize, Dorothea, is that just because someone is not rushing at you with a knife yelling “God is Great” does not mean they are moderate. Many Muslims come across as moderate until you ask a few questions, and then get ready for a shock.
Let me give you a specific exampole. An Imam from the local mosque where I live in Canada came to a meeting of the Humanist Association. He seemed like a nice, moderate guy. At some point, we asked him about the death Fatwah against Salman Rushdie.
Now, what would you expect a moderate to say? That this was just revolting religious murder? That he condemned it unequivocally? In fact, the man kept insisting that Fatwahs are issued only after long and due consideration by Islamic scholars. They are not done lightly or without “evidence”. In other words, murdering a man for writing a book you do not like becomes OK if it is done after extensive debate and consideration?
Finally I decided to pin the bugger down. I asked him what he would do if he knew Salman Rushdie was at a specific place in Canada, in our city, and a Muslim intent on killing him asked if he knew where Rushdie was.
Under Canadian law, this man, a citizen sworn to obey the laws of this country, would be an accessory to murder if Rushdie were killed, or even if he failed to alert the police to the presence of this murder in Canada.
The only answer that I will accept without being outraged is that he would obey Canadian law. His answer??? He could not deal with a hypothetical question. Next question please.
So the next time you assume that quiet Muslims must be moderate Muslims, think again.
It certainly isn’t no but through literally hundreds of years of struggle most Western countries have managed to severely curtail the power of the various Christian churches. As it currently stands, basic human rights are generally more vigorously defended in majority Christian/Jewish/Hindu/Budhist cultures than they are in majority Muslim countries (with Turkey being one of the few exceptions).
That’s what bothers me as well. I was part of the demonstrations against the Vietnam War which drew hundreds of thousands of people. I saw the Civil Rights marches on Washington, and the campus protests against apartheid, but where are the protests against Muslim on Muslim violence, or suicide bombing, or the oppression of women, or the lack of democracy, or the unfair distribution of oil wealth. It can’t be a cultural thing, because protests in favor of extremism gathers huge crowds. The only conclusion I can draw is that moderate Muslims don’t care enough to dissuade the fanatics. Yes, there is probably unfair conclusions being drawn about Muslims, so do something about it. The next time some jerk blows up a bunch of schoolchildren scream bloody hell about how Islam is being desecrated by such acts just like Americans did when were tired of the Vietnam War or skeptical about the invasion of Iraq or horrified by segregation. Until the day that protests against extremism are bigger than those for it, bad conclusions about Muslims will continue.
Efraim Halevy, former head of the Mossad, has said pretty much exactly the same thing. It’s a worrying thought.
With regard to moderate Muslim’s condemning the more extreme element I don’t have an answer. Muslims in Dafur killed many more Muslims then the Americans or the Israeli’s have yet there don’t appear to be any protests withint the Muslim community about that. Similarly, there simply hasn’t been a mass uprising of moderate Muslims condemning the terrorists.
My view is that we should look to limit immigration where possible and work on real integration on a generational level. Once that I happens I am very confident that these issues will be come moot.
As pointed out in post 64 and post 109, this has nothing to do with architecture. Supporters of the minaret ban please stop pretending that it does.
If the Swiss have allowed the Golden Arches[sup]TM[/sup] in, there is no reason to think there would be any trouble with opening a SpongeBobSquarePantsLand FunPark in Zurich.
The minarets linked to looked quite tasteful to me, too. They were hardly eyesores and in one case if I hadn’t been told it was a mosque, I wouldn’t have any idea. It makes me think it’s less the architecture and more the fact that it represents a religion that the Swiss, and many dopers, are very uncomfortable with.
And it’s making me more and more uncomfortable that people are talking about Muslims as this monolithic scary group. It’s not so different from a lot of the stuff I’ve read about antisemitism–basically that these people are all marked by traits and even though there may be exceptions, in general it’s just an unfortunate culture. I’m sure people who disliked Jews (or blacks or whatever) thought they were being as reasonable as the people in this thread. It’s just frightening to see that the thought process isn’t, “I’m sorry, I’m bigoted against Islam and I can’t really defend that” but rather, “This culture=Hatred and that’s why it’s okay to slam it.”
Why would it? Judging from history, they could as easily be just as hated a thousand years from now. Nor will they ever be allowed to “integrate” by the kind of xenophobes who pass laws like this.
Human rights are not defended very well in the Buddhist culture I live in. Extrajudicial police executions abound without anyone batting an eye, indeed often with the approval of the local community, and don’t EVEN get me started on how the hill tribes and other minorities are treated. It’s hard to find a Thai who thinks human rights are anything other than a cranky Western concept. That goes double for the other Buddhist societies in Southeast Asia.
You do know that Islam does not have any central authorities, right? There are no Popes, etc. Structurally it’s probably one of the least authoritarian religions out there. Even the fatwahs you are so worried about are basically just some guy’s opinion, and are completely non-binding and hold no weight beyond whatever credence you are personally willing to give that guy.
I have a hard time with this, because I lived in a truly moderate Muslim culture in West Africa. People there had the attitude of “same god, different traditions” and really truly believed it. They embraced the good in Islam- the sense of duty towards strangers and the poor, the closeness of family, the peace of day to day life. They had some of the bad, as well. It was a tough place to be a woman. But it had been a tough place to be a woman for thousands of years- Muslim women actually had more rights than pagan women. Anyway. They regularly lamented the violence they saw committed in Islam’s name. On the whole, they were good, caring, peaceful people who treated me with love and respect that I will never forget, and I just can’t help but think of them when I think of Islam.
Yeah, it’s frustrating for me too because these attitudes basically write off most of my family and their close friends. I mean, my grandmother is one of the people I know who’s worked hardest for women’s rights and even though she’s not super vocal about religion, she’s privately very religious and devoted to Islam. I think there are lots of people who practice Islam and are normal, moderate, hard working people. To assume that Islam=woman hating anti-Semite is a gross exaggeration. It does make me feel a lot better to know that not everyone feels that way, though.