Francis Chartrand for Rivière-des-Mille-Îles

When the media-political tribe is unanimous, I instinctively distrust. After verification, the reality is always more complicated.

The pollsters did not see it coming: In a referendum, 57.5% of Swiss have voted for the ban on building new minarets.

A minaret is the tower top which called on Muslims to prayer five times a day. There is no requirement that a mosque has one.

Outside Switzerland, the reactions were immediately fuse: a vote "hateful," "shameful", a "return of fascism." Nothing less.

Switzerland seems indeed very ill. There are only four minarets on mosques 200. A municipal regulation would probably have sufficed. The placards equating the minarets of the missiles were profoundly dishonest. The Muslims have reason to feel unfairly targeted? Yes.

The minarets were obviously a pretext. The referendum has expressed discomfort with a majority that sees a religious community grew exponentially strongly assert the public square. Similarly, in Quebec, the reasonable accommodation crisis was not really about women in pantyhose doing gymnastics.

For the Swiss political scientist Michael Hermann, a high score also means that voting xenophobic right wing added a vote secular feminist left. The Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan has also given a tremendous impetus to the camp's ban Assuming that the minaret was an affirmation of identity and political and not a religious requirement.

Switzerland has only 7.8 million inhabitants, like Quebec. In 1970, there were 16 000 Muslims in Switzerland. In 1980 the number had increased to 57 000. Today is 400 000. The question arises: can we integrate such volume so quickly, without a small company feel hustled?

No, precisely because it incorporates more. Therefore, the cycle is unemployment, poverty, exclusion, discrimination, anger, crime. The Washington Post on April 29, 2008 reported that in France, for example, between 60 and 70% of the prison population is Muslim, composed mostly of children of immigrants.

Turkey is a Muslim country that has most harshly criticized Switzerland. Did you know that until 2003 it was forbidden to build places of worship for non-Muslims? As Turkey now wants to join the European Union, it has repealed the ban and it has become more subtle.

In Ankara, the municipal regulation now requires that places of worship have a minimum area of 2500 square meters. In a country 99% Muslim, other religions are necessarily poor. They have therefore not afford to build so large or if they have, the city told them that there is not enough space for such big projects.

The Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, has already written that the minarets were the "bayonets" of Islam. It's reassuring.

In all Western societies, the poor integration of immigrants and the fatal multiculturalist ideology fueling a real identity problem. To deny or reduce it to an indictment against the majority, ensuring that when this unease is expressed, it will come out all wrong.

Link

Labels: Arab World, Islam, Joseph Facal, Religion and fanaticism, Switzerland, Turkey

# posted by Francis Chartrand @ 10:49 PM 0 Comments

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power in Turkey since 2002, will not be dissolved, and 71 of its main leaders, including President Abdullah Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will not be banned from any political office.

After two days of deliberations, the Turkish Constitutional Court announced Wednesday it rejected a request to that effect filed by the Attorney General. Ce dernier alléguait que le parti portait atteinte au sacro-saint principe de laïcité de l'État. The latter alleged that the party violated the sacrosanct principle of secularism of the state.

In press conference, the president of the court, Hasim Kilic, said that 6 of 11 judges had travelled to the arguments of the Attorney General or one less than the number required to ensure that the request be approved.

The President of the Constitutional Court, Hasim Kilic (2nd from right)

The judges, however, have concluded that the AKP was a hotbed for militants fighting against secularism and has consequently decided to deprive him of half of public funds to which he is entitled for the current year.

The accusations of undermining the principle of secularism of the state relied mainly on the attempt by the AKP to allow university students to wear the Islamic veil. The prosecutor also argued that municipalities controlled by the AKP tried to promote an Islamic way of life, including restricting alcohol sales.

Such cases are highly controversial in Turkey, a country whose citizens are predominantly Muslim, while remaining committed to the principle of secularism institutions established by the founder of the state, Kemal Ataturk.

Over the years, the Constitutional Court has banned more than two dozen parties from the Islamist movement, but none of them had popular support for the AKP. The party was re-elected with 47% of the votes in the summer of 2007, after a battle with the opposition and the army, which focused specifically on the secularism of the state.

The judgement was greeted with relief by the AKP, the European Union and financial markets.

Link

Labels: Francis Chartrand, Secularism, Turkey

# posted by Francis Chartrand @ 11:17 AM 0 Comments