Europe And The Minarets

(Note to family and friends: The most recent update on Mr. AOW is here)

With a hat tip to THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS for the below-the-fold link from Vlad Tepes....

Likely, you've heard of the recent referendum in Switzerland, the referendum which voted a ban on building more minarets.

From this article in the Los Angeles Times:

...The minaret "is a political symbol against integration; a symbol more of segregation, and first of all, a symbol to try to introduce Sharia law parallel to Swiss rights," Ulrich Schluer said in a telephone interview. Schluer is one of the leaders of the Egerkingen Committee, which authored the bill, and a lawmaker from the conservative Swiss People's Party.

[...]


By taking their proposal to a national vote, the Swiss People's Party and the Federal Democratic Union bypassed lawmakers' attempts to shoot down the bill as discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Many such proposals in Switzerland's system of direct democracy are turned down, but Sunday's approval by 57.5% of voters illustrated an anxiety that the political establishment had underestimated, said analyst Lukas Golder of the political think tank gfs.bern.

"This is a sign that the issue was only covered on the surface, and now it has come up, and the political elite can see that the broader public perceives real problems about the integration of Muslims in our society," Golder said....

How do other European countries feel about those minarets?

According to this over at Vlad Tepes, along the same lines as Switzerland. Even Spain!

Of course, a referendum reflects the will of the people and can be upheld or denied according to those sitting in the seats of political power. Thus far post referendum in Switzerland,

In a statement, the Swiss Federal Council, a seven-member executive body, said it respected the decision of voters.

"Consequently, the construction of new minarets in Switzerland is no longer permitted," it said, adding that the four existing minarets would be allowed to stand and that there was no prohibition on the construction of new mosques.

The ban will face legal challenges. Manon Schick, Amnesty International representative in Geneva, said banning minarets violates international law and guarantees of religious freedom.

Meanwhile, most of the West's political leaders continue to go down the same kumbaya path of making nice-nice with Islam, even as Moslems in the West attempt to take methodical steps to establish Islamic supremacy in Dar al Harb.

According to this statement from Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, minarets mean the following to fundamentalist Moslems:

[Erdogan] publicly read an Islamic poem including the lines: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers..."

Leaders of Western nations need to pay attention to Islamic symbolism, especially the symbols representing jihad.