Hacker News Reader

Comment by tompagenet2 | Hacker News Reader

The banning of minarets is a data point against this liberty.

Only for people who moved there, knowing full well that they were moving into a different culture, and that as a minority they would have to adapt to local norms. I've lived in a number of countries on various continents, and I have never expected the locals to adopt my way of doing things - I think that would be utterly bizarre. If you go there without a degree of humility and willingness to adapt you're a colonist.

While I agree with the premise, I don't see how this specific event ties to your argument.

A simple Google search shows that the referendum passed with 57% of the voters support, so that leaves us with a 43% who thinks it's a bad idea for one reason or another. Since around 5% of Switzerland is muslim, one could argue building minarets is not such a scandalous idea for Swiss voters.

This is quite a simplistic view I think. Neither a 'yes' nor a 'no' to this initiative says that a voter thinks of it as scandalous either way. Maybe there should be more options to answer such votes though, like "don't care", "don't understand", "yes/no, and I feel so strongly about this to use my yearly joker" - but at the end you don't wanna overcomplicate the political process.

I believe that misses my point.

OP seems to be suggesting that people should "do as the romans do", and I said while I agree with the general idea, his suggestion doesn't fit the case in hand.

In this case half of romans are verifiably not bothered [1] by the act of building minarets, then this simple act doesn't signal that people "go there without a degree of humility and willingness to adapt", in his words.

Or you could turn it around and say, if (having ability to) building minarets was such an unacceptable expectation to a point of painting one as a colonist, it wouldn't gather the support it gathered from the local community in the first place.

[1] to the extent of participating in a political process to explicitly disagree with the ban.

I’m not for that ban, but I think that bit of direct democratic building code gets overly dramatized. Things like this serve to moderate the political landscape. If people feel like they stay in control throughout rising immigration from cultures they deem problematic, there is less of a tendency towards extremism. And so far I haven’t seen any extreme counter reaction in Muslim communities either. The soup is cooked hotter than it’s eaten.

The direct consequences for Muslims are hardly the problem here – only about 30 women in Switzerland (we know about) even wear a burka/niqab and quite a few of them are Swiss converts. Back when we banned minarets, we had like three (!) of them in the whole country. But we had ads like these [0] all over the country for months again and if that doesn't give you the most profound chills, I don't know. It's textbook right wing scapegoatism and I'm pretty sure Muslims can feel the very real consequences of that kind of propaganda.

[0] https://verhuellungsverbot.ch/downloads/

They're also about to ban niqab / burka.

They voted for the ban today. France showed that it had little positive effect for women.

The University of Lucerne ran a study and came to the conclusion that there are around 20-30 women in all of Switzerland who wear a niqap or a burqa.

So it's ok to outlaw clothing if only 30 people wear it, or...?

That banning is only a point against liberty if your definition of liberty is very American (religion above welfare of people) for most people maintaining the culture that gives that liberty is as important as liberty so changing that culture would obviously destroy the possibility of that liberty I really do not understand why people simply close this eyes when this bans go against Catholics and christians but freak out as soon as separation of church and state touches any non Christian

Asked out of genuine inquiry and curiosity not to bait (I know it can be difficult to tell online): The referendum was simply to add the words "The building of minarets is prohibited" to the constitution. This only affects someone who would wish to build one (so Muslims) and in my mind says that your type are less welcome here. Why would Christians be negatively affected by this?

I would take the view that banning the form of your religious buildings (and implicitly, to your comment, being hostile to Muslims who in your response you seem to equate with a culture that destroys the possibility of liberty) seems more of a betrayal of the principle of liberty and freedom for all than allowing different people to pray and associate as they wish, providing they follow basic tenants of human law (not harming people etc).

That had nothing to do with "separation of church and state". It was banning private individuals to use a specific form of architecture. Pretty much any country in the world allows building mosques with minarets... did they threaten anyone's liberty / change their culture?

Going back to GP's point, the deeper issue is that people thought this was worth writing in the constitution. Other countries apply such laws in different ways, so I don't think the Swiss direct democracy is to blame here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com