Muslim groups in Switzerland and abroad condemned the vote as biased and anti-Islamic. Business groups said the decision hurt Switzerland’s international standing and could damage relations with Muslim nations. Omar Al-Rawi, an integration representative for Islam said his reaction was one of ”grief and deep disappointment”. The initiative was approved 57.5 to 42.5 per cent. Muslims comprise about 6 per cent of Switzerland’s 7.5 million people. Many are refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and about one in 10 actively practises their religion. The country’s four existing minarets will not be affected by the ban as they do not traditionally broadcast the call to prayer outside their own buildings. The sponsors of the initiative provoked complaints from human-rights group by claiming that the growing Muslim population was straining the country “because Muslims don’t just practise religion”. “The minaret is a sign of political power and demand, comparable with whole-body covering by the burqa, tolerance of forced marriage and genital mutilation of girls,” the sponsors said. They said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared mosques to Islam’s military barracks and called “the minarets our bayonets”. Anxieties about growing Muslim minorities have rippled across Europe in recent years, leading to legal changes in some countries. There have been French moves to ban the full-length body covering known as the burqa. Some German states have introduced bans on headscarves for Muslim women teaching in public schools. Mosques and minaret construction projects in Sweden, France, Italy, Austria, Greece, Germany and Slovenia have been met by protests. But the Swiss ban on minarets, sponsored by the country’s largest political party, was one of the most extreme reactions. Mohammed Shafiq, the chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a British youth organisation said he was concerned the decision could have reverberations in other European countries. Amnesty International said the vote violated freedom of religion and would probably be overturned by the Swiss supreme court or the European Court of Human Rights. The seven-member Cabinet that heads the Swiss government had spoken out strongly against the initiative but the government said it accepted the vote and would impose an immediate ban on minaret construction. It said that “Muslims in Switzerland are able to practice their religion alone or in community with others, and live according to their beliefs just as before”. “The sponsors of the ban have influenced a change in the relations with Muslims in a negative way,” said Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Zurich. “Muslims indeed will not feel safe any more.” Geneva’s main mosque was vandalised on Thursday when someone threw a pot of pink paint at the entrance. Earlier this month, a vehicle with a loudspeaker drove through the area imitating the call to prayer, and vandals damaged a mosaic when they threw cobblestones at the building. Source: Compiled by APN from various media reports
Do you think this is actually about religion, or culture?
I think it’s fascinating that a country known for not taking a stand on anything at all has taken this stand…
Swiss voters have voted overwhelmingly to impose a constitutional ban on minarets, barring construction of further mosque towers in a vote that put Switzerland at the forefront of a European backlash against a growing Muslim population.
culture
We live in a time of unprecedented change. The sci-fi writer and futurist Arthur C. Clark noted that, “Only a century ago the poles were utterly unknown, much of Africa was still as mysterious as in the time of King Solomon, and no human being had descended 100 feet into the sea or risen more than a mile into the air.” Today, the knowledge in the world is doubling every two years — and the rate is itself increasing. Amazing new and emerging technologies, such as nanorobotics, biotech and gene technologies, offer unprecedented opportunities for progress on many fronts.
Of course, every technology has a potential down-side, and we must be wary of how far we travel down the road of hi-tech, and how fast. On the whole, though, we live in exciting – if sometimes worrying – times. Yet the future of human communities, cities and nations is not determined simply by technological advance. Neither will it be simply the product of what risk analysts call ‘low probability – high consequence’ events (such as earthquakes or tsunamis). The future of cities and communities is determined by human responses to events.
Human choices will shape the future, deciding among other things how technologies should be utilized and how we should interface with our natural environment. However, human choices don’t appear in a vacuum; they are products of our values, aspirations and fears. Because we are social beings, our values are heavily influenced by the cultures – the norms of behaviour and worldviews – of the various groups to which we belong. These cultures are shaped to a significant degree by the actions (or, inaction) of leaders.
Whether in the spheres of business, politics, economics, media, academia, religion or community organizations, leaders don’t just build structures, they are architects of culture. It’s the strength of a community’s culture that determines how that community will respond to the major challenges and questions it will face. Leaders can reshape the future of entire communities and cities, by creating positive, proactive cultures within their spheres of influence. In fact, this is the core of the leadership call: to move organisations – and through them entire communities – forward in a positive direction.
The major role of leadership is to equip people to shape the future proactively – for themselves and for the world.
If the next decade, with its fast moving technological advances and natural and ethical challenges, is to see the world become a better place for most, if not all, of its inhabitants, leaders of all stripes will need to take that role seriously and engage the future with hope and courage. If its leaders think and act in the right way, the church has the opportunity to become a landmark for communities in constant change.
We have the opportunity – indeed, the responsibility – to develop strategies that will move entire communities forward in a positive and godly direction. By building strategic, future-engaging cultures of hope in our churches, we can shape the direction of communities and entire cities.
The author of this article, Mal Fletcher, heads up Next Wave International, a communications group which is training companies, major community organizations, charities and churches to engage the future and move society forward in a positive direction.
Source: Derek Brown – rediscoveringthekingdom.info via Australian Prayer Network
