On minarets, two cheers for the Swiss

I've not posted on the Swiss minaret vote yet because I've been trying to sort through my thoughts. As you probably know, Swiss voters resoundingly voted to ban the construction of future minarets on mosques in the country. All the Right-Thinking People have denounced this result as pure bigotry. Juan Cole, for instance. I can't say that I'm entirely comfortable with what the Swiss have done, in large part because it's a largely symbolic move that does nothing with regard to the immigration situation that prompted it. Had the Swiss voted to outlaw the building of mosques, I would be very much against that. As it is, they've only voted to prevent mosques from erecting the spires that typically accompany the Islamic houses of worship. If I were Muslim, that would bother me greatly, but it's not the same thing as banning mosques themselves. In Egypt, Coptic Christians, who, unlike Swiss Muslims, are a substantial minority in that country, and who, also unlike Swiss Muslims, have been there for a very long time (their presence precedes Islam), have to get government permission to make even the slightest repairs on their existing churches. And this permission is often not granted, or granted after a long time. And of course in other Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia, you can't even build churches.

I'm not saying that Egypt and Saudi are models for how to treat religious minorities and their architectural aspirations, but I am saying that this is not a one-sided problem.

Now, let me say that in general, I would oppose a similar referendum in the US, because First Amendment considerations aside, we are a different country than Switzerland. We have a far more pluralistic polity here, and a far less rooted history, both culturally and architecturally. It strikes me as insensitive for us to expect European countries to adopt American notions of religious pluralism and indifference. Do you really want Swiss town centers to look more like the center of Syrian villages? I wouldn't object if the Syrians (say) passed laws to preserve the Islamic architectural character of their town centers by strictly limiting the kinds of churches that Christians could build. Then again, I voted for turning my own neighborhood into a historic district for purposes of preserving the unique architecture here. As a result, I can't do whatever I want to my house. It's a loss of a certain liberty, but I think that what's being preserved is important. I think of the Swiss minaret situation in the same light. And I also believe that in principle, there's nothing wrong with a particular people deciding what the place they live in should look like, and should not look like. If the Orthodox community in Switzerland, assuming there is one, wanted to build onion-domed churches in Swiss towns, and the Swiss objected, I would grant their point. We don't have to have onion-domed churches to worship as Orthodox Christians. Similarly, as long as the Swiss don't deny to Muslims the freedom to worship freely in mosques, I don't see much wrong with the architectural decision they made.

Of course this was not simply, or even mostly, a vote on aesthetics. This was almost certainly a vote driven by fear of the Islamization of Switzerland. On that point too, I can't say that I blame the Swiss, though again, it's kind of pathetic that their answer to these legitimate cultural anxieties is to ban Muslim prayer towers. If the Swiss are afraid of losing their Christian cultural heritage, why do only 16 percent of them go to church? Hence my "two cheers" for the Swiss.

Nevertheless, I pretty much identify with this sentiment from Gerald Warner at the Telegraph:

It is no coincidence that the people most loudly bemoaning the ban on minarets in Switzerland are those who most vociferously applauded the prohibition on crucifixes in Italian classrooms. The consistent principle is an attack on European Christian civilisation, complemented by subservience to all the enemies of that civilisation, secular or Islamic.

The Swiss voters have not forbidden the practice of the Muslim religion: they have simply insisted that it should not indulge in triumphalism by towering over Christian churches. If they had really wanted to play hardball they would have insisted that the first mosque in Switzerland could only be built the day after the first Christian cathedral opened for worship in Riyadh. British and European Christians have been doormats for secularists and politically correct "faith groups" for too long. It seems the days of abject masochist subjection are over.

Let me repeat: if the people of [Muslim country] wish to prevent the towering of Christian steeples over minarets, or the presence of Christian steeples at all -- this, in an effort to preserve the Islamic architectural character of the place -- I have no problem with that in principle.

UPDATE: Context from David Pryce-Jones. Excerpt:

In a population of some seven million there are 400,000 Muslims worshipping in about 150 mosques, half a dozen of them with minarets. In the small town of Wangen, in 2005, the imam of a largely Turkish community applied to add a minaret to his mosque. He was allowed to do so, but the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan, a crypto-Islamist, had been unwise enough to issue a blanket defiance to Western countries: "Mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets." A politician by the name of Christoph Blocher picked up the challenge and made a national issue of it. A lawyer by training, he is a successful industrialist, the founder of the Swiss People's Party which has a right-wing platform, and he has been a government minister.

In Switzerland, the people are sovereign, and express their sovereignty through referendums. Blocher and the Swiss People's Party have been campaigning for a couple of years for a referendum on the minaret issue. Posters depicted women in burkas surrounded by sharp bayonet-shaped minarets. In the minds of Swiss women, minarets herald sharia law and discrimination, and their votes appear to have been decisive.