Tolerance?

Ja till förbud mot att bygga minareter - DN.se: "Folkomröstningens utgång är pinsam för det neutrala Schweiz, där det politiska etablissemanget förkastat förslaget som stridande mot landets författning och manat invånarna att rösta emot det."

57% of the Swiss people (ie, of little over 50% turn out--about 25%) does not want to see minarets. Apparently they do not have anything against Muslims in general but they don't want to see them in power because they see the minaret as a symbol of power.

Well, Christians are persecuted in Iraq despite the protection of the US army. The Pope could not muster support for building churches in Saudi Arabia. If not for the above vote, I could have argued that in the West we don't live hundreds of years ago. We live today. Therefore we don't care if there are minarets on the mosques but we do care that Muslims follow Swiss law. Because, we do not mix the state and the church.

This becomes even more important when one considers that there are a lot of Catholics in Europe and that Catholics have some rules that for all practical purposes override common law, like the divorce question. There is of course the possibility of leaving the church but this is often a very difficult decision for the individual.

I actually wrote a post about this in May 2007 right after they had collected the 100,000 names for the referendum. I thought this was silly then. I still do. I sincerely hope that there is going to be an end to the expansion of foreigner aversion in Europe.