geneva::information
photography and rant from the middle of europe
I must openly admit that I never cared about how many minarets there were in Switzerland. In my romantic ideal of a place where several cultures can live together, churches are an expression of culture and heritage. Multiple cultures will bring multiple churches. Geneva, my focal point in Switzerland even if I’m now working somewhere else, features several christian churches with variants in belief and language, all of them with their own buildings. A synagogue. A mosque. And probably places for other religions to live their spiritual lives. It’s pretty cool to have this diversity in a single city and one of the most interesting temples is the orthodox church with it’s golden round roof.
Geneva, a city with guestimated 50% foreigners (fifty, that’s five-zero, meaning every second person you run in has no Swiss passport or does not come from Geneva), has – as expected – not agreed to the notion of writing “It’s forbidden to build minarets” into the constitution.
From the four minarets which exist in Switzerland (see Kontroverse um den Bau von Minaretten in der Schweiz (is this relevant?)), one is in the Geneva. The other three seem to have stirred the emotions so much that a majority decided to, yes, forbid to build new ones. Something in Switzerland went wrong here – and the ones who understand directly why a multicultural and neutral Switzerland is economically well better get started to foster the multicultural and neutral spirit (before an initiative comes out to forbid to do that).
The most prominent reaction today came from Turkey. That’s funny because most of the prospect users of a mosque do not come from Turkey, but from eastern europe. Not sure that they care much about Turkey at all, but well, someone needs to take the lead.
It would however be much better for everybody if the ones who are upset now start to listen. Not because “the one who is without guilt shall throw the first stone” (and think about religious freedom in their own land) but because a vote is not a change of the constitution. Switzerland has a working democracy which is able to absorb a lot of – pardon – silly things. And if Switzerland was not able to, it’s embedded into Europe (not the European Union though), and Europe has, as well, a system (though it’s not really extremely democratic), which will absorb things and set them into order.
The muslims in Switzerland seem to be much more relaxed than the ones outside. And the ones who are really worried are those people who are ashamed of the vote results.
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