Gamal Nkrumah argues that the Swiss referendum to ban the construction of minarets puts Muslims and not mosques back on the Western map The Swiss do not recoil at the notion that they favour some foreigners over others. Sikhs in Switzerland can construct temples, but Muslims cannot hoist minarets over their mosques. The emotive nature of the poll, does not reflect on the ideological convictions of the Swiss government itself. Swiss democracy is infamous for its reliance on popular referendums to determine prickly issues. This is one -- instigated by the far right. The result is that from a legal stand-point the construction of minarets is now disallowed. Posters depicting minarets looking like missiles were plastered all over the tiny Alpine country. The real threat as far as the far right is concerned is that minarets are imposing visible evidence of the vibrancy of Islam as opposed to the waning homegrown Christianity for the Swiss who take pride in their 16th century hero John Calvin, the founder of Protestantism. Switzerland has 400,000 Muslims and only four minarets. In a country of 7.8 million this suggests that something is seriously wrong -- or spiritually lacking. But in a country where 27 per cent no longer believe in God, and where regular church attendance is a miserable five per cent, Muslims indeed represent a spiritual challenge. Switzerland has misread Islam by seeing religiosity as a threat to a secular lifestyle -- if anything, it is a moderating influence on Western licentiousness. This week's Swiss referendum looks more like a statement of the obvious. Islam is a part of Switzerland. There was a relatively high turnout of 53 per cent of whom 57 per cent approved of the ban. There appears to be more Muslim sympathisers in Switzerland than the referendum suggests, primarily because they gravitate to cities, working in visible service occupations. The question is can Muslims in Switzerland develop an allegiance to the Swiss state? The inability of Muslim immigrants to integrate in Swiss society is becoming a serious problem. The Egyptian Swiss Islamist intellectual grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Hassan El-Banna, argues that the intolerance of the European right poses the biggest threat to Europe's social fabric. "What we need is a new narrative: a new 'we'," explains Tareq Ramadan, El-Banna's grandson, noting that Europeans need to psychologically integrate that into their world view. But there is a problem. That is easy to say but difficult to do. The right rejects the new "we". The multi-faceted nature of Swiss Muslim life is an implicit rebuttal of the notion that Muslims in Switzerland constitute a threat to their non-Muslim compatriots. Swiss Muslims observe Islamic dietary laws, slaughtering in public sacrificial animals during Eid Al-Adha, for instance. But the principal question is how deeply religious principles ought to inform Swiss public law. The referendum result is still subject to being challenged at the European Court of Human Rights. Whatever the results, the two civilisations, the two "we's" are squaring off once again, but now in a more dangerous duel. Assimilation used to be such a controversial subject several decades ago. Then it mainly referred to the French policy of assimilating its colonial subjects, rather than in Metropolitan France. This was not necessarily a racist decision -- blacks and other colonial subjects became honorary Frenchmen. Most Swiss Muslims are Slavic peoples from the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Some are Turks, but very few Swiss Muslims are swarthy Arabs or South Asians, not to mention black Africans. It would be easy for a cynical pundit to belittle the ostentatious display of animosity and religious bigotry so prevalent in Swiss cities where Muslims are geographically concentrated. I believe the symbolism of the Swiss referendum matters a great deal. But what do we do about it? Support exceeded 65 per cent in many Swiss cantons. This dismal outlook might not prevail forever. If the drive against Islamic Sharia law moves to ban the niqab, forced marriages and female circumcision are expected to be enforced, Muslims would be outraged. This is not a small matter for a tiny country in the heart of Europe like Switzerland. The result of the Swiss referendum feeds a broader suspicion that Muslims are undesirable aliens unless or until they become Muslim only in name, effectively discarding the rigorous tenets of their faith. The ultra-conservative Swiss People's Party is in an enviable position. It is after all easy to scapegoat Muslims as the media whips up Islamophobia. We should listen very carefully to their depictions of Muslims. The Swiss need to dip into their reservoir of goodwill. If militant Islamists are a distortion of the moderate beliefs of Muslims, minarets are an essential architectural feature of a mosque. As such, to ban minarets is foolhardy. To try to defuse Western hostility to Islam, Muslims are hard pressed to accommodate Western ideals of freedom of expression and other civil rights. Freedom means freedom to propagate the Islamic religion and freedom to practice Islam.
