A vote in Switzerland to ban the construction of new minarets, towers attached to mosques from which the call to prayers is announced, might have appeased many of this European country's Islam-haters. In Egypt, however, the vote, which was made on Sunday, has raised anger and even reignited debates about the clash of religions. "While shocking, the vote came as no surprise to me," said Medhat Mahmoud, a lawyer in his early thirties
The same Western countries have offended Islam's Prophet Mohamed before and continue to launch campaigns of smear against the Islamic religion," he told the Egyptian Mail in an interview. A solid majority of Swiss voters chose in a referendum to ban the construction of new minarets, considering them symbols of what they call 'Islamic militancy'. The rightist Swiss People's Party, Switzerland's biggest party, had forced the referendum after collecting a mandatory 100,000 signatures from eligible voters within 18 months. Egypt's Mufti Sheikh Ali Gomaa strongly denounced the vote and said it would deepen Muslims' feeling of discrimination. There are around 400,000 Muslims and 160 mosques in Switzerland, the European country with a population of 7.3 million people. Although the Swiss government had opposed the vote along with several churches, many in Egypt continued to lash out at these institutions, and talked about 'conspiracies' against the Islamic religion. "Muslims must join hands to stand against this campaign," said Mohamed Sayed, a 26-year-old civil servant. "We shouldn't stay silent while these racist Westerners continue to offend our religion every now and then," he added. Muslim scholars say minarets have become an intrinsic part of mosques everywhere, being a symbol of the elevation of the word of God and the wide reach of Islam as a religion. What makes for vehement opposition to the swiss ban on the part of the people of Egypt, a country with a Sunni Muslim majority, is that almost every mosque or a small prayer house here has its own minaret or tower. Cairo, the Egyptian capital, is called the city with a thousand minarets."This is racial," said Zeinab Mohamed, a high school student in Cairo. "These people must have some respect for the religious sensitivities of others," she added. The Swiss ban on the construction of minarets is echoing across Europe, with calls in the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy for referendums to ban the Muslim symbol. "We will call upon the government to make a similar referendum possible in the Netherlands," Geert Wilders, the leader of the far-right Dutch Freedom Party said yesterday.The Vatican joined Muslim figureheads from Indonesia and Egypt, as well as Switzerland, in denouncing the vote as a blow to religious freedom. Switzerland said the country's new ban on the building of minarets is not aimed at Muslims but at Islamic fundamentalism.Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said her country supported religious freedoms.Maryam Ra'afat contributed reporting.
