Switzerland Defends Ban on Mosque Minarets

[CJB]

people tell us "separate the church and states" all the time... like taking 10 commandments... who knows, maybe they don't want any churches build in their gov't owned land? (I don't know the land rights in that country)

If they have some already built, that's would be good news if they don't plan tearing it down. They probably just don't want more built.

you know, in USA, you do have to have permit to build a church. And they will turn it down, but only if it going to cause problems.

If they're worried about zoning issues and volume control, that's one thing. But then why single out minarets? There are other sources of noise too. Sounds like it's about practicing Islam and in that case, again, no quicker way to piss off a bunch of people than to keep them from practicing their religion. People get really sensitive when it comes to their beliefs.

 

[Reba]

Just to be clear.

The Swiss aren't prohibiting the building of mosques, just new minarets.

You do all understand the difference of how mosques are used and how minarets are used?

Remember too, that Switzerland is not the same kind of "melting pot" for immigrants that the USA is.

 

[somedeafdudefromPNW]

No different than a Catholic church tower that rings their bells five times a day as well.

:P I should know... I lived close to one once.

 

[Reba]

Another viewpoint on McCarthy:

Sunday 30 November 2008 06:48pm EST.
In Defense of McCarthy

by Chris Kulawik

Now commonplace in the liberal lexicon, the word McCarthyism has come to represent a “government witch-hunt seeking to punish unapproved thoughts or political stances.” Today’s liberals throw the word around in countless situations: discussing history, when society rejects their radical ideas, or, most noticeably, when losing an argument. The claims levied against Senator Joseph McCarthy, historical fallacies which have stuck through the decades, have wrought a grave injustice. Agree or disagree with the second Red Scare, any individual who rejects indoctrination and accepts the facts of history cannot justify the modern association of McCarthy with political repression.

Many believe that Senator McCarthy was on the House Un-American Activities Committee. In truth, Senator McCarthy couldn’t sit on a House committee; he was on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Another claim attacks Senator McCarthy for unfairly criticizing, questioning, and pressuring many writers, actors, and directors in Hollywood for being communists, thus ruining their careers. There’s one problem with this claim: the only people investigated by Senator McCarthy’s committee were individuals in government. Everything ever conjured up about McCarthy having anything to do with the Hollywood Ten, Arthur Miller, et. al., is simple fiction.

Next? That popular claim that McCarthy made wild accusations, never rooted in sound evidence and always disproved. While a viable claim 55 years ago, the Freedom of Information Act has recently made available the VERONA project. The VERONA project was the American interception and decoding of cables sent by the Soviet Union to their communist operatives in the United States. Senator McCarthy couldn’t come out and reveal the VERONA project, as the Soviets would realize the breach and cut off the incriminating communications. History has vindicated Senator McCarthy; liberals haven’t.

So why did he imprison some people and ruin the lives of others? Well, the government employees who admitted their communist connections or pled the Fifth when approached by the committee were given a preordained period of time to pack up and either retire to the private sector or leave old jobs, which had often required security clearance. I’ll chalk it up to coincidence, but a good number of them left their old jobs to lecture at Harvard, write books, or keep high company in the parlors of society’s elite.

Lastly, there’s that relentless stream of ad hominem attacks that are now in history books. Despite numerous accusations, McCarthy was not a grumpy, pathological liar with no friends. Rather, McCarthy was a trusted confidant to the Kennedy family. Robert Kennedy made McCarthy the godfather of his child, while John F. Kennedy spent most of his life defending McCarthy from blatant character assault. Once, at a Harvard dinner, a speaker compared McCarthy with convicted Soviet spy Alger Hiss, prompting JFK to rise above the Crimson crowd and scream, “How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor!” before storming out of the building.

Senator McCarthy was a great man who put the safety of his nation and fellow citizens above his own personal stature. For challenging the communists and proving the liberal institution wrong, the left has launched a vendetta against McCarthy’s name by associating it with a violation of liberties and the all-too-common notion of “witch-trials.” So next time some one asks you about McCarthyism, let them see for themselves that all they’ve been taught is part of a partisan ploy in the struggle for history.

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/printer/view?nid=12090

 

[kokonut]

Thanks, Reba. This would be undoubtedly be new to many people here not knowing the real history of where "McCarthyism" came about and who McCarthy was. A true patriotic American.

 

[Reba]

This is interesting:

A minaret is a tall, slender tower which is attached to a mosque, a Muslim place of worship. There are a number of uses for minarets, but perhaps the most famous is the traditional call to prayer, which is often issued from the balconies minarets. Many people associate minarets with Muslim culture and the Muslim world, and they are common features in the cityscapes of Muslim regions, where the horizon may be dotted with an assortment of minarets of all shapes and sizes.

Muslims actually consider minarets to be bid'a, or “innovations.” The first minaret was built long after the Prophet Mohammad died, and therefore minarets are not part of the traditional practice of Islam. Minarets also do not appear to have been built specifically for the purpose of issuing the call to prayer or adhan, which was initially issued from the roof of the mosque or called in the streets. Despite the fact that minarets are new, they have come to play an important role in Muslim society.

One thing a minaret does is make a mosque very identifiable. In Muslim cities, communities often arise around mosques, with people frequenting a specific mosque and viewing its minaret as a comfortable and familiar feature in the neighborhood. Travelers sometimes find themselves using minarets as orienting landmarks, since they often tower over surrounding architectural features, making them very easy to find. The competing calls to prayer blaring out from various minarets with the assistance of speaker systems can also be quite a thing to hear.

Many mosques have more than one minaret, and the minarets are often beautifully carved, painted, and tiled, making them works of art as well as functional architectural features. Just like Christian churches, mosques have subscription funds and hold fundraisers to restore their minarets and build new ones, and particularly wealthy Muslims may donate the construction of a minaret to their mosque as an act of faith.

In the hot desert countries which many Muslims call home, the minaret also helps to ventilate the mosque, acting as an air shaft to suck hot air out. These graceful spires are often latticed, promoting circulation, and topped with inventive domes and other architectural features to make them particularly distinctive. The practice of erecting tall spires on places of worship seems to be common to many faiths; you could view it simply as advertisement, and a desire to get closer to God.

What is a Minaret?

 

[sallylou]

All mainstream historians have discredited McCarthy. Here's a secondary level text that contains solid facts:

Joseph McCarthy

Tragically, after his political career was over, he drank himself to death. What a waste.

 

[Jiro]

Another viewpoint on McCarthy:


http://www.columbiaspectator.com/printer/view?nid=12090

Chris Kulawik... a right-wing radical. why am I not surprised that he wrote this article? I know this person. He caused a lot of trouble in my backyard. He's a bigot... and an attention whore. He was one of the most hated students in Columbia University and he was proud of it. What a disgusting person. :roll:

 

[Loghead]

It's surprising to see such a high number of ethnocentric people on Alldeaf. Sad, really. It's a form a racism.

 

[Jiro]

Dershowitz needs a refresher course on what McCarthyism was...

Apparently acclaimed attorney Alan Dershowitz does not correctly recall what McCarthyism was.

The esteemed trial lawyer and Harvard professor says the following in defense of John Yoo, of all people:

UC Berkeley leaders are wrestling with that decision as a federal investigation into John Yoo's legal advice to the Bush Administration apparently winds down. The dilemma is rare. At risk are the tenets of academic freedom that have long allowed college faculty members to speak their minds in the name of scholarship. Yoo's case revolves around his advice on dealing with accused terrorists,including a notorious memo that provides legal justification for torture. Yoo, who is temporarily teaching at Orange County's Chapman University, has long attracted protests on his home campus, but some surprising allies have come to his defense.

"I think this is simply a left-wing version of McCarthyism," said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor who disagrees strongly with Yoo's views on torture. "He should be judged solely on the merits of his academics."

But Berkeley administrators and faculty leaders said they would be concerned about Yoo teaching law students if he were found to have violated ethical or legal standards. Critics have called Yoo a yes-man for President George W. Bush, essentially telling him what he wanted to
hear.

Dershowitz does not disagree strongly with Yoo on torture as some of you will recall. But that is beside the point. Yoo was hired to teach law. If he has broken the law or broken with ethical standards, then how does that qualify him to teach the topic to law students? But I do remember this argument well, as it has been used before and for the same reasons.

During the Nuremberg trials, lawyers were held accountable for providing legal cover for the illegal and immoral. Mr. Dershowitz might want to visit the Harvard Nuremberg collection in his free time.

Breaking the law or knowingly misrepresenting the law so that your boss can engage in criminal activity does not compare in the slightest to the activities of Sen. Joe McCarthy's political targets. The late Senator hunted people who broke no law and engaged in no illegal conduct. He hunted them for their political views as the sole criteria and destroyed many lives in the process.

Now anyone who reads me knows that I am a fierce anti-Communist. But as fiercely as I am against the old Soviet system, I am that much passionately for the Bill of Rights. McCarthy was not hunting Soviet moles. He was hunting liberals and intellectuals, making him a more appropriate politician for Il Duce's version of a republic rather than our own.

What Yoo happens to have in common with the victims of McCarthy is that he happens to be considered an intellectual, but that is where the comparison ends. Unlike McCarthy's victims, Yoo did not simply lecture on a topic unpopular with a certain political point of view. He did not only assign homework to his students that was somehow seen as un-American. He did not have a few meetings with people of like mind who were seen as undesirables by certain politicians.

Had Yoo conducted simply those activities and even if he did so while practicing Satanism and being an open racist, he would still be fully within his rights as an American citizen no matter how much I disagreed with him. Freedom of speech is most important when it protects those with whom you disagree, because that ensures that your to express your point of view will also be protected. Yoo could have even slaughtered chickens in class as part of his lecture and still made a reasonable argument that he was well within his rights academically.

What Yoo is accused of doing, however, is actually acting to assist others in law-breaking by perverting and twisting the law for his own ambitions. Yoo gave Bush officials a green light legally - knowing this was illegal of course - to break the law on something as basic as human rights, on the right of an accused to a fair trial, on the rights of all not to be refused legal assistance at the whim of a single man drunk on power and acting as the sole ruler of a republic.

He denied the basic legal protections to many and determined that he was able to rule that a single man - the President - has all the authority of a dictator, regardless of the law, regardless of the international treatise to which we are signatories, regardless of all ethical and moral questions. He ruled something illegal to be legal not because he did not know the difference, as is clearly visible from his various public claims in defense of his opinions. No, he made his determinations for political reasons and for which now the world views us as a nation of men, not laws.

He acted outside of the classroom to violate the very principles he claims to now teach in the classroom. This is no way puts Yoo in the same category of political victims. It is he, rather, who created the victims for political reasons.

Again, John Yoo is being openly accused of war crimes by human rights lawyers, politicians, NGOs, etc., which is hardly a small accusation and hardly one often made against American attorneys. I will not be surprised if Yoo ends up at the Hague, yet another first for America and American attorneys.

Alan Dershowitz long ago had my respect. Despite the plethora of issues we disagreed on, what we had in common was far more important -our deep devotion to the Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees. But Dershowitz and I no longer have something that basic in common, sadly. For reasons I do not understand, he has abdicated all ethics and integrity in order to defend the indefensible. He argues that all are entitled to a fair trial, including OJ Simpson, but contradicts himself and defends extraordinary rendition and torture as tools of the state acceptable in some situations.

For shame Mr. Dershowitz. I once respected you and now am only ashamed of you not just from the perspective of an American citizen, but also as a former citizen under the Soviet regime.

Where you could have been a shining light sir, you have become part of the dark blotch known as the Bush administration in the annals of American history. One has to wonder what Dershowitz's motive is. He has not cried McCarthyism when the facts of the Siegelman or Minor prosecutions became known. He has not rushed to offer his legal expertise to the victims of Bush's DOJ and the Stasi-like tactics employed by attorneys who violated ethical standards and likely violated the law for political reasons.

He has made no effort in recent years to help those who have been denied the very basic freedoms he claims to care about. Instead, he has spent his recent years defending an administration so un-American that I wager even McCarthy would have been shocked back into sanity had he seen the goings on of the last 8 years.

For shame Mr. Dershowitz.

 

[kokonut]

It's surprising to see such a high number of ethnocentric people on Alldeaf. Sad, really. It's a form a racism.

That doesn't make any sense. Please clarify. I think I know what you're saying but need more clarification.

 

[Loghead]

That doesn't make any sense. Please clarify. I think I know what you're saying but need more clarification.

I'm saying that I see so many people rooting on Switzerland for banning Mosque Minarets and it's just not right. Just because it's not something you believe in and just because they have a few (a FEW is the key word... there's millions of Muslims, and they aren't all terrorists!) idiots that do go around blowing things up, does not mean that you should be rooting a country for trying to symbollically enforce it's own beliefs on Muslims by banning minarets. They believe, and other ethnocentrics believe, that their way of life is the only way, and it's wrong not to accept that other people have other ways of doing things.

'Nough said.

 

[Jiro]

Thanks, Reba. This would be undoubtedly be new to many people here not knowing the real history of where "McCarthyism" came about and who McCarthy was. A true patriotic American.

I take your non-answer to my question in post #10 as an admission to endorsement of McCarthyism and FDR's Executive Order 9066 (ordering Japanese-Americans to relocation camps)... both of which were later ruled as unconstitutional.

 

[CJB]

Just to be clear.

The Swiss aren't prohibiting the building of mosques, just new minarets.

You do all understand the difference of how mosques are used and how minarets are used?

Remember too, that Switzerland is not the same kind of "melting pot" for immigrants that the USA is.

It still limits people from being able to fully practice their religion.

What does Switzerland not being the same kind of melting pot as the U.S. have to do with the topic of this thread?

 

[CJB]

I'm saying that I see so many people rooting on Switzerland for banning Mosque Minarets and it's just not right. Just because it's not something you believe in and just because they have a few (a FEW is the key word... there's millions of Muslims, and they aren't all terrorists!) idiots that do go around blowing things up, does not mean that you should be rooting a country for trying to symbollically enforce it's own beliefs on Muslims by banning minarets. They believe, and other ethnocentrics believe, that their way of life is the only way, and it's wrong not to accept that other people have other ways of doing things.

'Nough said.

 

[Reba]

Senator Joe McCarthy, anti-Communist

 

[somedeafdudefromPNW]

I see there's a conflict of opinion what patriotism means...

Yes, I know it means "being loyal to your country," but people have different conception of what that may be.

 

[kokonut]

I'm saying that I see so many people rooting on Switzerland for banning Mosque Minarets and it's just not right. Just because it's not something you believe in and just because they have a few (a FEW is the key word... there's millions of Muslims, and they aren't all terrorists!) idiots that do go around blowing things up, does not mean that you should be rooting a country for trying to symbollically enforce it's own beliefs on Muslims by banning minarets. They believe, and other ethnocentrics believe, that their way of life is the only way, and it's wrong not to accept that other people have other ways of doing things.

'Nough said.

So, a hands-off approach is better? Which laws would be better for women to live under? A Sharia law or the law of the land where they live in a non-Islamic country?

Here's a lesson learned:
Canada: Montreal women criticize sharia | Women Living Under Muslim Laws

How far is too far when it comes to "freedom of religion"?

 

[Jiro]

if it takes paranoia and fear to protect this country and be called as a great American patriot for that, then I have lost faith for this country.

 

[CJB]

So, a hands-off approach is better? Which laws would be better for women to live under? A Sharia law or the law of the land where they live in a non-Islamic country?

Here's a lesson learned:
Canada: Montreal women criticize sharia | Women Living Under Muslim Laws

How far is too far when it comes to "freedom of religion"?

Just because someone disagrees doesn't mean they need to enforce their way on others. There's a difference between disagreeing with a belief system/not practicing it and banning it.