Switzerland’s referendum vote to ban minarets is needlessly xenophobic but it does not infringe the religious liberty of Swiss Muslims. Minarets remain emblematic of mosques in the Muslim heartlands but there is no theological reason why houses of worship in the West have to incorporate such towers.
Their original purpose was to relay the prayer call with the unamplified voice. Today this is done by modern technology, so minarets are not integral to contemporary mosque design. European mosques should stop mindlessly mimicking Eastern design and create prayer halls that blend into the landscape.
Muslims who have settled in Switzerland (and elsewhere in Europe) should not confuse culture with creed. To become integrated into their surroundings, they must relinquish the cultural baggage of their ancestral homelands. They should practice a Swiss Islam that is rooted in the society in which they live.
Although the Swiss have been convinced by right-wing zealots that minarets are a problem, local Muslims should not embrace a victim mentality. They must confront the toxic radicalisation of their faith that is imported from overseas.
The Wahhabi denomination (and its kindred sects), which has unlimited petrodollars and exclusive jurisdiction over Islam’s holiest mosques, engenders rampant misogyny, anti-democratic obscurantism and an archaic legal code, which includes an un-Koranic prohibition on non-Muslim religious buildings in Islamic lands. Switzerland now joins Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan in banning the buildings of non-dominant faiths.
When European Muslims unthinkingly endorse this warped theology by desiring medieval Sharia, defending honour killings, stoning to death, forced marriages, Muslim exceptionalism and a separatist society, they only invoke fear and exacerbate anti-Muslim sentiment. When Europe’s Muslims extol such un-Koranic doctrines as the niqab (face veil), they exclude themselves from the mainstream.
Only when Muslim immigrants and converts in Europe reject the twisted ideology of a fundamentalist male clergy will the chief causes of anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe recede. Meanwhile, despite the Islamophobic minaret ban, the religious rights of Swiss Muslims remain intact. They do, however, have a rare opportunity to cut the link with the dominant theology of the East and to restore Islam’s pristine beliefs.
Taj Hargey, the chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford and the imam of the Summertown Islamic Congregation in Oxford.