The gods won't be happy either

In The New York Times' front page "Swiss Sharply Criticized After Vote to Ban New Minarets", Nicholas Cumming-Bruce gives a concise summary of reactions, both domestic and international, to the result of a recent referendum in which Switzerland voted to ban allowing the building of any new minarets, those distinctive towers that clearly proclaim the presence of a Moslem mosque. As Cumming-Bruce reports, the general opinion, both amongst Swiss political commentators and politicians and internationally, is that the Swiss people have made a serious mistake in passing this law.

I am inclined to agree with the consensus that Cummings-Bruce presents with his quotations and paraphrases of comments from people such as Swiss justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, and France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. I think that Cummings-Bruce and his sources are also right in speculating that the reasons for this awful vote are based on fear of Islam, which in turn seems to me to be based solidly on ignorance and intolerance, neither of which are good reasons for making law.

Of course, people who voted in favour of this unjust law give other reasons for what they did, such as that minarets are not simply religious tools and symbols, but are also political symbols of something that is not and cannot be a part of a healthy democracy. This seems wrong to me. Although it might be true that the religious symbol has also acquired political connotations, that does not stop it from still being a religious symbol, and one that is important to the followers of that religion. Unless there was some stronger reason, I don't think that the fact that something represents a political and legal system, such as Islamization and Sharia law, that are rightly loathed by many is a good enough reason to ban it. That would be equivalent to arguing that if we don't like something, it should be banned, in which case almost everything would be banned: there are many people who dislike any particular religion, so they would all have to be banned. Also, the cross seems to me to be at least as much a political symbol as the minaret, and whilst I would approve a law that banned the state from showing crosses or other religious symbols on public property, I think that a law that made it illegal to show crosses on private property, especially church property, must be an unjust law.

One final thought: this issue reminded me of a point that Roong made in her essay on the nature of democracy, that simply because a majority approve something does not make it either morally just or even democratic. In this case, I think the new Swiss law is democratic, and is an example of the fact that democracies are not perfect, that they too can and do pass laws that are unjust. But flawed as democracies might be, they are better than every alternative.

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References

Cumming-Bruce, N. (2009, November, 30). Swiss sharply criticized after vote to ban new minarets. The New York Times. Retrieved December 1, 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/world/europe/01iht-swiss.html?_r=1&hp