Nearly 58% of Swiss voters cast their ballots in
favor of banning the construction of new minarets
in the Alpine republic, a surprise result that
led at least one Swiss member of parliament to
declare that “the foundations of Switzerlandʼs
direct democracy have failed.”
That is clearly wrong. Swiss direct democracy
shows its mettle when Swiss voters use it
to stand up to their political elites, as happened
here. Having said that, Sundayʼs vote, for all the
hand-wringing leading up to it, was a decidedly
mild-mannered sort of protest. The construction
of new minarets is banned, but the building of
mosques is unaffected, and the vote does not
affect the four existing minarets in the country.
Nobodyʼs freedom of worship is threatened, but
a symbolic message has been sent.
But what message, exactly? The vote betrays
an undercurrent of fear among the Swiss—a fear
that is not without cause. There is no denying
the connection between radical imams and terrorist
acts. Nor should anyone look away from
the fact that too many European Muslims flatly
reject the norms of their host countries, sometimes
in ways that are criminal: honor killings,
child brides and the like.
Yet banning minarets does nothing to address
that fear. It merely makes it less likely that the
average Swiss will be confronted by a visible
symbol of Islam upon his skyline. Thus, even
as a symbolic gesture, it seems to encourage a
head-in-the-sand approach toward the 5% of
Swiss who are Muslim. In much of Europe, this
is the norm anyway, the result of political correctness
and cowardice.
Rather than being a blow against that attitude,
the vote seems only to reinforce it. Banning
minarets wonʼt do anything to assimilate
Switzerlandʼs or Europeʼs Muslims, or to ensure
that economic opportunity is available to everyone
of whatever creed, or to deal with Western
Europeʼs demographic problem of too few newborns.
The ban, in other words, does too much and
too little at once. Too much because it becomes
a very visible and easily exploited symbol of
supposed European intolerance. But it accomplishes
too little because it seeks merely to hide
from view the problems that gave rise to the fear
of the minaret in the first place.
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The Wall Street Journal. editorial