Hence, no belief is superior to another because they all serve the needs of different members of the human family. What is dangerous is when belief becomes a political blueprint for worldly authority and laws are made in the name of the divine. Such laws and political authority are not to be questioned or held accountable for their deeds. The rules they abide by cannot be changed or challenged. Furthermore, despite all the talk about divinity or divine edicts, the authority that represents these as sacred is purely of worldly character and has set out to manage worldly affairs.As long as a/any religion is not turned into a political ideology, it is compatible with contemporary ways of living just as it is with democracy. Hence not only Islam but Christianity and Judaism may be incompatible with democracy and human rights if they turn into political agendas/ideologies. Every political ideology is belligerent when it comes to survival or ruthless when defending its turf. That is why it is not right to criticize religions for what they are but how they are used or abused as political agendas/ideologies.
These introductory statements were written after a majority of Swiss citizens (57 percent of those who took part) voted to ban the construction of new minarets for mosques in Switzerland. Although Swiss authorities warned their citizens against provoking Muslims in general and Islamist radicals in particular, they went along to vote for the construction of new mosques without minarets for the 400,000 Muslims residing in Switzerland. Presently there are four mosques already built with minarets.
It seems that the right wing was instrumental in convincing a majority of the people to vote the way they did. The referendum was authorized after the required 100,000 signatures were collected by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party. Party leader Ulrich Schluer could not hide his dislike of Islam, coated in the following flimsy rationale: “We do not forbid Islam. We forbid the political symbol of Islamization and this is the minaret … [which] is a symbol of political victory,” he said.
Anyone with a modicum of sense knows that minarets have followed the example of the bell towers of Christian churches and that they are all fashioned after the towers erected in the Middle East before both Christianity and Islam. These towers were symbols of the local deities through which mankind and gods interacted. Deities either came down to earth through them or they dwelled in these towers. Bell towers and minarets were high because they conveyed messages to the community of believers by the power of sound. They communicated the time for prayer and other important communal affairs. So reading history backwards and seeking for the danger of an encroaching sinister belief that could undermine the existing belief system in one particular zone is a political statement and has nothing to do with religion whatsoever.
The outcome is quite radical and embarrassing, reducing the Swiss understanding of freedoms (in this case freedom of religion) to the level of Saudi Arabia where Christian churches are prohibited. For a mosque without a minaret is like a church without a bell tower or cross that is inseparable from the wider whole of the shrine’s edifice. Yet the outcome of the referendum amended the Swiss constitution; mosques in this country will have no minarets from now on.
The European right-wing is just like its Turkish counterpart seeing “clear and present danger” everywhere. For example, Geert Wilders, chairman of the Netherlands’ right-wing Party for Freedom, recently said in New York: “There is a tremendous danger looming, and it’s very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This is not only a ... danger to the future of Europe itself; it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West.”
Wilders goes on to condone Israeli excesses against Palestinians as a crusade against Islam by saying, “Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of looming dangers.” He is not alone in his paranoia. Christian evangelist Pat Robertson, who preaches to millions worldwide through the Christian Broadcasting Network, says that Islam is “not a religion” but “a violent political system” and that Muslims should be treated like members of a communist or fascist party.
When one looks the other way, one is dismayed to see a similar hate-speech and similar hard feelings on numerous jihadist Web sites ready to fight the “enemies of Islam” who show no respect for their revered religion.
What is needed is the dissemination of better information on all three Abrahamic religions that share more in common than differences, and more responsible politicians who would tell their people that all religions are respectable and that they should not be abused by politicizing them. Otherwise religions become ideological weapons and inter-communal relations become a battleground.
