EUROPEAN "TOLERANCE" AND MUSLIM "LENIENCE"

The international community will comment for a long time to come on the sensational results of a referendum in Switzerland in which 57.5% of voters supported a ban on the construction of minarets.  The result took most observers completely by surprise:  the alpine republic was always thought to be a peaceful, tolerant and liberal country.  But it turns out that local tolerance has quite unexpected limits.  The result aroused understandable anger in Muslim countries and communities.  A leading Indonesian Muslim, Mascouri Abdallah, declared that the referendum "reflects the hatred of the Swiss towards Muslim countries," and the head of Egypt's Muslims called it an "insult."  The position of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), which described the referendum as the "latest example of a growing anti-Islamic movement in Europe, fuelled by ultra-right extremist politicians, xenophobes and racists who oppose immigrants and who rule without regard for common sense, wisdom or universal values."  And the OIC envoy in Geneva, Babakar Ba, simply gave the Swiss a lesson in human rights:  "It is a bad answer to a bad question.  I am afraid that this sort of thing is a gift to extremism and intolerance."

"Turkey demands that Europe be tolerant towards Muslims.  In Turkey, Christian churches are being repaired with allocations from the state budget.  We expect the same attitude towards Islam in Europe," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Edrogan said, adding that people's choice, freedom of conscience and freedom to worship cannot be changed by a referendum.  Turkish President Abdulla Gul, for his part, noted that the referendum shows that Islamophobia is growing in Europe.  "The decision reached by the referendum caused natural concern to more than 100,000 Turks who reside in Switzerland and who consider it their second homeland," reads the official Turkish Foreign Ministry statement.

Finally, the main Turkish negotiator in talks with the EU, State Minister Egemen Bagis, urged wealthy Muslims to transfer their funds from Swiss banks to Turkish banks.  "I am certain that the referendum will convince our brothers in Muslim countries who keep their funds in Swiss banks and who are considering investment, to review their decisions.  The doors of the Turkish banking sector are always open to them," the Haber Turk newspaper reports the minister as saying.

However, no less critical assessments were voiced in Europe.  UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, for example, said that the ban on the construction of minarets in Switzerland was an act of discrimination and poses a threat to international law.  Pillay did not declare the ban illegal, but she did condemn the "campaign of intimidation against foreigners" which preceded the referendum and the results of the referendum, which "sow the seeds of discord."

The European Commission for Human Rights noted that the ban could infringe fundamental freedoms and asked whether or not human rights could be an issue for a popular vote.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner described the referendum as a "manifestation of intolerance" and voiced his certainty that banning minarets is discrimination against a religion:  "If we were asked not to build belfries, we would certainly be displeased.  I think that the Swiss will revise their decision very soon."  The Vatican said that the decision by Swiss voters creates additional problems for the coexistence of different religions and cultures.

However, the European ultra-right are already poised to spread the Swiss experience to their own countries.  For example, Geert Wilders, Member of Parliament and leader of the ultra-right Party of Liberty in the Netherlands, said in an interview with Radio Suisse Italienne (RSI) that he would soon demand that the Dutch Government hold a similar referendum.  The leader of the Danish People's Party Pia Kjersgaard intends to raise an initiative in Parliament to hold a referendum on banning the construction of minarets.  The General Secretary of the Alliance for the Future of Austria counts on achieving a legislative ban on the construction of minarets in his country.  The Italian Minister for Simplification of Legislation Roberto Calderoli said straightforwardly:  "We have received a clear signal from Switzerland:  yes to belfries, no to minarets."  In Germany, the Swiss newspaper Temps notes, the Swiss referendum was described as a manifestation of "concerns regarding the Islamization of the country, which also exist in Germany and which must be taken seriously," according to Wolfgang Bosbach, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.

In the mean time, the Swiss themselves are trying to find a way out of a quite difficult and unpleasant situation.  As is known, Switzerland is a country of "direct democracy":  Everything is decided by referenda, including the issue of whether cyclists should wear helmets.  This time around, they decided to put the issue of whether minarets should be added to mosques to a referendum.  And, as a result, they received what they received.  And now neither European politicians nor the UN know what to do about the result.  On the one hand, it is an expression of the will of the people but, on the other hand, this expression of that will makes them uneasy.

The Swiss authorities are trying to cool passions.  For example, Justice and Police Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, speaking at a conference of heads of internal affairs ministries of EU member countries in Brussels, tried to blame the results of the referendum on the "flood" of immigrant workers, a conflict with Libya, which is effectively holding two Swiss citizens captive, and also on a growing sense of fear among the people.  Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, in conversation with ambassadors of Muslim countries and in a phone conversation with leaders of the Organization of Islamic Conference and League of Arab Countries, tried to persuade them that people were against minarets, but not against mosques, and therefore, freedom of conscience would be guaranteed.  Finally, in the words of Calmy-Rey, the results of the referendum can be appealed.

The most surprising thing is that Muslims in France are ready to admit that if you live in Europe, you can do without minarets, by and large.  However, this is not the first time that an issue concerning religious architecture has detonated public displeasure.  For example, passions rose in Nazareth when local Muslims decided to build a new mosque.  The site was chosen in such a way that the new mosque would become the dominant architectural feature of the town.  And this angered local Christians (who are, incidentally, Palestinian Arabs):  historically, the main architectural landmark in Nazareth has been the Church of Annunciation.  Muslim leaders said that there was a grave of a Muslim martyr on the site where they were going to build the mosque.  The Christians countered with another argument:  this area was controlled by the Mamluks and then Turks and, had there been a martyr's grave, they would have built a mosque there long ago.

There are great many examples of "architectural wars" in history, up to the construction of Aleksandr Nevskiy Cathedrals on "dominating heights" of major towns and cities seized by Russia.  In Baku, the cathedral was situated where schools No 189 and 190 are now situated and in Tallinn one was built in the very heart of the Old Town, amid its "European" Gothic and Baroque buildings.

In Switzerland, the minarets clearly did not compete in height with the spires of local churches.  But people in the alpine republic were convinced that this would only be the beginning.  In addition, as journalists now say, the Swiss right launched an impressive propaganda campaign which was based on a simple falsehood:  they claimed that the mosque was a building for prayer, whereas the minaret was much more and symbolized "radical and militant Islam."

Of course, it is possible to ask ironically what role was played by the poem recited at a rally of Turkish Islamists by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then an activist with the now-dissolved Refah:  "Mosques are our barracks, minarets are our bayonets, domes are our helmets and believers are our soldiers," but the Swiss, or at least the vast majority of them, clearly know very little about the canons of Islamic architecture.  However, in the opinion of the German paper Frankfurter Rundschau, minarets are just the tip of the iceberg.  The ulterior motive of the initiative is most clearly expressed on the web site of its sponsors - "those who build minarets want to stay here."  And they want the Muslims to go.  The proportion of immigrants in Switzerland has already reached 21%, the newspaper states.  There is a fear of "foreign influence" and this must be taken seriously.  The real problem facing Switzerland, the paper reads, is the integration of people of different cultures.  This is not a matter of assimilation, but precisely of integration, of coexistence between people of different cultures with mutual respect for other cultures and religions.  This is precisely the gist of the discussion under way in the country, not the construction of minarets, of which there are currently only four in Switzerland.

After all, it is known that society only accepts "migrants" to a certain extent.  If there are too many, foreigners are seen as a threat to the native "cultural environment."  In Switzerland 21% are "foreigners," and many Europeans are seriously worried that immigrants, once they "get a foothold" in cosy European towns, will start to call the tune there.

Politicians who can be identified as both "conservatives" and "radical right", and racists, suggest that their compatriots go to immigrant communities:  indeed, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether it is Europe or the Near East there.  The architecture is European, but there are women in Muslim headdress, clearly non-European in appearance, many restaurants have non-European cuisine - not everyone in Europe is pleased with such scenes.  Of course, there is a huge distance between a doner kebab in a Zurich street to statements that "tomorrow, our women will have to wear burkas and we all will have to learn Arabic," but it has to be said, to be fair, that it can be the other way around:  in Britain, Muslim activists already demand that pork be banned from supermarkets, because this insults the religious feelings of Muslims, that the popular character of English fairy tales, the pig, be removed from showcases, and images of pigs be banned from children's pyjamas.  And even the scandal over the Danish caricatures meant, for Europeans first and foremost, an attempt by Muslim leaders to dictate to a Danish paper what it can publish and what it must not.

But what is most interesting thing here?  Despite a series of loud and firm statements, the reaction of the Muslim world is nowhere near what it was when the film "Fitna" was released or Danish caricatures of Prophet Muhammad were published.  And of course, the oil sheiks are in no hurry to withdraw their capital from Swiss banks.  Muslim leaders are also no strangers to this type of "tolerance".  And it would be as well to remember the tragic fate of the Blue Mosque in Yerevan.  After a period as a museum in Soviet times and after losing three of its four minarets, by some miracle it survived the "reconstruction" of Yerevan and the subsequent ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis.  At present, the Blue Mosque is under the sponsorship of the Iranian Embassy in Armenia and is considered to be functional.  But Armenian authorities have banned the muezzin's call to prayer.  A bell tolls at the times for prayer.  And Muslim leaders, including the Iranian authorities, raised no objection to that.  Armenia was also forgiven acts of vandalism at the mosque in Susa and desecration of the mosque in Agdam, which was even filmed on video (the footage was then broadcast by the Russian channel RenTV).  But it is known in radical Muslim circles that Armenia has an unofficial "status of immunity" and that status has apparently been granted to Switzerland too.  The secret here is simple:  the key is the flow of money.  In Arab countries, ethnic Armenians often control the financial sector - this is no longer any secret.  And Swiss banks - well, they are Swiss banks, after all.

This is why we should not expect Muslim leaders to call for a real boycott of Switzerland or that the "oil sheiks" will transfer their funds from Geneva to Turkey.  That is unlikely to happen even if not just minarets, but also mosques themselves are banned there.