Minarets and the Concept of Reciprocity

Update

French President Sarkozy today “voiced sympathy for Switzerland’s controversial decision to ban the building of Muslim minarets, calling on religious practitioners to avoid ‘ostentation’ and ‘provocation’ for fear of upsetting others.” He counseled Muslims to consider a “discreet” form of religious practice, not an “ostentatious” one.

Original Article

The mainstream media continue to decry the Swiss referendum on minarets. To date, the New York Times has published one editorial and five additional articles on the subject, including one today. Perhaps The Paper of Record views the 30% of the electorate who actually voted in Switzerland as traitors to their own multicultural, anti-racist, politically correct belief system.

The problem is that the Islamic world today does not share this hallowed belief system. Actually, it never did. Rather, it has destroyed or built over synagogues, churches, and temples, and denied that such infidel places of worship ever existed. Note the fevered Palestinian attempts to claim the Temple Mount, where once the ancient Jewish Temple stood, as really “Islamic.”

The Islamic world does not allow new synagogues or churches to be built. Either at all — or without great difficulty. (Yes, certain Muslim countries may now “restore” synagogues as museums. There are no or very few Jews left and the synagogues are not fully functioning places of worship.) Further: Muslim fundamentalists currently persecute, torture, and murder those Christians who dare remain in the Middle East, and they kidnap, forcibly convert, and “marry” their very young daughters.

It is time to demand — or at least to expect — reciprocity. Otherwise, we are really being racist in having one (higher) standard for Westerners and another (much lower) standard for the barbarians.

Granted: The West is not as barbaric and intolerant as the Islamic world; we do not willingly wish to become intolerant. Yet, tolerating the intolerant is unwise, or as the Jewish sages tell us: Being kind to the cruel results in cruelty to the kind.

Thus, if there can be no churches or synagogues built in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. — then why should the Swiss or the Europeans allow new, blockbuster size mosques, and sound-splitting loudspeakers emanating from minarets? According to Imam Kurdi, writing in the Arab News:

“And let’s not be hypocrites. If you held a referendum in a Muslim country asking whether the construction of new church steeples should be permitted, you are also likely to get an overwhelming no. So let us not brand this a Swiss phenomenon and let us also remember that it is not the majority of the Swiss population that supported the ban but the majority of those who voted, which if you do the maths comes to 30 percent of the population.” (Thanks to Esther for bringing this to my attention.)

Let me be clear. I am one of those Westerners who has “dreamed East.” And, as a Jew, I have an undeniably dangerous but familial kinship with Arabs and Muslims. I find the Muslim call to prayer beautiful — but only if I refuse to understand that, as an infidel, an American citizen and patriot, a Jew, a woman, and a Zionist, that my place inside that mosque is that of a sub-human, fair-game target for hatred or worse.

Jews in exile from Arab and Muslim countries have launched a beautiful, haunted literature, one in which they manifest nostalgia for the places which endangered them and forced them to flee. Often, the danger is minimized, the customs romanticized. I am thinking of Andre Aciman, Roya Hakakian, and Lucette Lagnado.

I am in favor of interfaith gatherings. Peaceful voices are sweet to my ears and yet: telling the truth is far sweeter than lying. The truth is:

Mosque and minaret building in Europe probably represent a refusal to integrate; a refusal to separate mosque and state. Perhaps it also signifies an intention to one day vote in Shari’a law as the law of the European land. According to my colleague, Henrik R. Clausen, at Europe News:

“Minarets are built to ‘stamp a site with Islamic character’, not for their religious significance. Actually, no building should in principle have any religious significance, for only Allah is to be worshipped, not stones, buildings and holy water. The reality, of course, is somewhat different. The core purpose of a minaret remains to mark the ownership, that this land is Islamic.”

Clausen points out that many Islamic minarets started out as church watchtowers.

Thus, the minaret (and what it symbolizes) is cause for concern.

Update

Thanks again to Esther for bringing to my attention an important point: “Similarly to the French, Belgians don’t see a big difference between banning minarets and banning mosques. In fact, there are very few people who oppose building minarets who do not oppose building mosques as well.”

According to one survey, she also writes, “A majority of Belgians oppose building mosques. Almost 56.7% don’t want mosques to be built in Belgium, and 61% don’t want one in their neighborhood.”