THE controversy over the Swiss vote against the construction of new minarets seems to emphasize political and constitutional issues, notably the restructuring of many right-wing parties around the issue of a “European-Christian” identity standing against an “Islamization of Europe” and the possible conflict between the democratic right to make decisions by voting and the constitutional principle of freedom of faith. Yet the main argument suggested to support the ban position is rarely discussed.
The basic reasoning of the ban position is presented in a flyer prepared by the “Federal Popular Initiative Against Minarets”, which is initiated by a provincial “Egerkinger Kommittee”, and it focuses on the significance of the minaret. The key idea lays in the following assertion: “The minaret is an expression of willingness to have politico-religious power.” The two-page flyer suggests that this is the case because the minaret “has nothing to do with faith,” and also because of what Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in 1997 when he compared, playing with the words of a 1912 Ottoman poem, the minarets to “the bayonets” in an Islamist march to power. *HERE*<http://1426.blogspot.com/2009/12/swiss-controversy-misunderstanding.html>
