Hicham Maged's blog Acquiring knowledge lead to the acquisition of power

Flying with Black Wings

Yesterday on Sunday, portion of Swiss citizens cast their vote on a referendum to ban building minarets on mosques in Switzerland. The results came as a surprise for this ‘strange vote’ which was implemented in response to the political calls by the far-right-wing “Swiss People Party (SVP)” since June 2008 to legislate a local constitution that forbid such constructions.

The keystone to understand what went wrong is to pause and analyse since neither exaggerating nor extreme anger can help, so let me ask a simple question: what made citizens in 22 out of 26's cantons with a 57% to cast their vote for such referendum? The answer and beyond is what I am trying to do in this post so be my guest in reading.

SwissBan: A New Brand

Firstly, I shall start with saluting the folks at SVP for their ‘genuine acts’ that pave the road for establishing a new brand for Switzerland in the 21^st century called SwissBan; a new third millennium's invention that is fabricated in contrary to the normal human trend which aims to understand and respect the variety of people on planet Earth.

Bravo! Let me hear the applause!

Aside from sarcasm, the direct answer for my question placed at the beginning of this post is ‘Swiss democracy’ which reflect the will of people. Well, this is true but I beg to differ because democracy -in my point of view- is not a goal but a tool which means it can be used right or wrong, and hence, when people vote, they do so according to their assumptions that was formulated and directed by the media, politicians and so on.

Consequently, the fear of Islam and Muslims, known as Islamophobia, is the fuel for the ideology of the conservative right-wing parties to survive and expand in Europe since the 90s of the 20^th century and hence in this case, it lead those people to cast their vote in this way. In fact, I am feeling sad for them; how they are affected by the tunnel vision that see nothing but the wrong stereotyped image about Islam and Muslims; something that has been reflected into nothing but racism in:

1. the poster of SVP's campain which is discriminating Muslim women (attached pic);
2. the game which was launched under the name Minarett Attack (attached pic);
3. associating Switzerland's national anthem and flag with the background of the game;
4. symbolizing an Architectural element, the minaret, to serve their ill vision.

If this is not racism, tell me what else can we identify this? And hey, you make a wrong comparison by saying “look at your own backyard” because in Egypt and most of Arab/Muslim countries, despite the problems we face, we cannot even make such constitution to ban Churches and Synagogues. Furthermore, I am aware about the extreme acts done by some Muslims yet moderate people in our region do not accept this either to the right or to the left simply because this is not Islam but Muslims act; it is totally different! Nevertheless, even if we establish comparision, radicals and/or conservatives are playing an important role in such vision here and there yet the circumstances are just different!

Obsession with Muslim Women

On the other hand, I cannot end without returning back to the poster of the SVP's campaign and here a simple question rise: why everybody have problem with Muslim women? If we look for an answer, we need to digg through mentalities a little bit and we shall discover that radicals and/or extreme conservatives everywhere have this problem with women in general and Muslim Women in particular.

As for the poster, it is not only discriminating women, whether they wear niqab (burka) or not but also reflects the ignorance people have so please do not tell me about 1^st or 3^rd world thing because such categorisation seems to fall down in the case of women and hey we are talking about Switzerland not another country!

It not only about being wrong, ignorant for knowing nothing about Islam except from media and politicians, generalizing and stereotyping, but also about badly affecting the country's image; instead of shedding more lights on liberty and human-rights that portrays Switzerland since many decades, some people choose to spent efforts in this ‘genuine’ way.

Dears, by reaching this paragraph, you can easily identify a typical scenario for what any extreme right-wing can do in any country either by hiding behind freedom of speech and democratic acts or the vice-versa since the same destination is reached at the end of the day; when people do not understand what common grounds mean and follow the chaos of politicians with their tunnelled vision.

In a nutshell, I am looking forward for Swiss people to re-evaluate what happened; it is not only whether law protect citizen's rights or not, which is something important to debate and go for in the Swiss courts to correct for sure, but what is more important for me is that this fatal mistake should set up an alarm for not falling into the swamp of ignorance where nothing fill it but fear, anger and stupidity ~ Everywhere!

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.” ~ [Daniel Boorstin]

Related Posts

• Common Grounds
• Tunnel Vision
• Fitna for Whom