You need a vacation to Istanbul to change your mind. It is one of the most beautiful skylines in the world and the minarets are a sentiment to that.

Again: The referendum initiative was expressively and quite openly launched based on Islamophobia, the official so to say reasoning for it bein hat Minaretts are supposed to be a sign of islamist political dominance. You simply cant try to make it out as a minor architecture regulation, because it simply isnt, and because nobody in Switzerland even tried to pretend to.


Uh, yes, but that simply doesnt matter in the the treatment of Islam. Thats what I meant with groupthink. Democracies are supposed to be secular and religiously neutral, not favouring one religion over another, so Islam should not be any nearer to or farther from "us" (and can indeed even be part of "us") than any other religion. Equating Islam with the middle eastern dictatroships is hence inacceptable.

Minarets can be pretty on their own.. but not in a western landscape..

Actually, have you been to (relatively nearby, after all) Bavaria? The onion churhc towers there look quite similar. Well, besides the shapoe they are named for, obviously, but colour and brightness remind me of them...

I don't know about Switzerland, but in Germany, you need a ****load of permissions to build an aesthetically bold building that might not fit in the landscape anyway -- and thus minarets which would be considered not fitting would not be allowed.

Regardless of that, I think when it comes to aesthetics, it's all a matter of taste, and "taste cannot be debated", as the German saying goes.

Apart from that, Susano hits the nail on the head: This is a sign of blatant xenophobia, nothing else. Islamophobian hatred running amok, much like anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1930s. Unfortunately, those Swiss voters, as well as the Dutch Wilders voters, don't remember this lesson from history.

It's ironic that the Swiss voters voted against Islam, yet they don't even hit it -- it doesn't even have a significant effect on Muslim life, when there are no minarets, because mosques have not been banned and will without any doubt continue to exist. And if there is indeed a good reason to be afraid of certain aspects of Muslim life in Europe, wouldn't that be secret hate preachers in backyard mosques anyway, which are not officially recognized?

All this achieves is rallying up Swiss Muslims and native Swiss people against each other -- splitting what should be united.

Oh, and Maikeru: It's not freedom when the majority decides to strip a minority of their basic civil and human rights. By that logic, it would be "freedom" if a majority of 51% of the people democratically decided to put the remaining 49% in labor camps and gas them to death.

As classic philosophers recognized already, democracy defined as mere decision by majority is tyranny -- Aristotle said so, so did Montesquieu and Kant. It's tyranny of the majority over the minority. Freedom is the exact opposite: When every minority, and the smallest minority is the individual, enjoys full protection of basic civil and human rights, even if the majority is against it.

Yes, apart from thge fact how nonsensical such islamophobia is - if you want nontheless to procure it, there would be several strategies both more efficient and less damaging to freedom of religion/equality. For example, the Swiss could simply decide to revoke the right of residence for resident aliens from poorer countries. I think that would tak ecare of 90% or so of the Muslims in Switzerland...