Category Archives: Nationhood

Update II: Minarets No More

EU, Freedom of Religion, Islam, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, The West

The minaret is the quintessential symbol of Islam’s power. Not only is this structural spire an imposing eyesore, towering over 200 meters above, but it emits—by virtue of the muezzin’s ululations—noise pollution five times a day.

The Swiss have not rejected freedom of religion—Muslims can worship as they wish. What the Swiss have decided is to reject the architectural, auditory and cultural imposition that the minaret signifies and retain the western flare of their cities. Naturally, CNN has framed the plebiscite as the work of the far right:

Swiss voters on Sunday adopted a referendum banning the construction of minarets, seen by some on the far right as a sign of encroaching Islamism.

“The Federal Council respects this decision,” said a statement from Switzerland’s government. “Consequently the construction of new minarets in Switzerland is no longer permitted. The four existing minarets will remain.

MORE.

Update I (Nov. 30): On the meaning of the minaret, Islam scholar Andy Bostom quotes “the official Brill Encyclopedia of Islam”:

“It seems on the whole unrelated to its function of the adh?n [q.v.] calling the faithful to prayer, which can be made quite adequately from the roof of the mosque or even from the house-top. During the lifetime of the Prophet, his Abyssinian slave Bil?l [q.v.], was responsible for making the call to prayer in this way. The practice continued for another generation, a fact which demonstrates that the minaret is not an essential part of Islamic ritual. To this day, certain Islamic communities, especially the most orthodox ones like the Wahh?b?s in Arabia, avoid building minarets on the grounds that they are ostentatious and unnecessary. … It must be remembered, however, that throughout the mediaeval period, the role of the minaret oscillated between two polarities: as a sign of power and as an instrument for the adh?n.”

AND:

“The venerable Brill Encyclopedia of Islam (EOI) entry on minarets makes plain that minarets are a political statement of Islamic supremacism. Interestingly, given current Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s provocative statement while mayor of Istanbul (the full statement was quoted in a NY Times story http://www.kurdistan.org/Washington/nyt.html by Stephen Kinzer from 2/16/1998: ‘The mosques are our barracks, the domes are our helmets, the minarets are our swords, and the faithful are our army’), cited by opponents of minaret construction in Switzerland—the observations from the Brill EOI about the Ottoman perspective on minarets are of particular note.”

MORE.

Update II: Diana West has rounded up responses from across Europe to the Swiss’s anti-Islamization declaration.

Update II: Bangalore On The River Brent (Demographics? Diddlysquat!)

Britain, Europe, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, The West

What on earth is a representative of the British National Party (BNP) doing in what he says is Wembley (an area of north-west London), but looks like Calcutta, warbling in Welsh? Be gone with you, you rambling racial supremacist. Give it up. As the Virginia Postrel thesis goes, change is always good. Embrace it. Count your blessings: there is still one pukka British symbol on the streets of Wembley: the double-decker bus.

Update I: Surprisingly, most comments hereunder ignore the larger reality, preferring to concentrate on minutia: are the streets clean and orderly (how the fuck do they know?). Western liberals are like that.
By contrast, confronted with a take-over of swathes of their towns, Chinese, Indian or Pakistani men would be furious. This is to their credit.
Yet an out-migration of the indigenous English population from a section of the city they no longer recognize or feel comfortable in is dismissed by your average, non-nonchalant, liberal-minded westerner. How sophisticated! This is why I, with few exceptions, have little respect for western men and, like Tom Fleming, hold white liberal-minded men responsible for everything from affirmative action to racial set-asides to speech codes—and, in general, for most forms of cultural and legal foot-and-mouth. As Dr. Fleming put it:

“[W]e should not make the mistake of blaming black people for the suicide we continue to inflict on ourselves. We white males are the problem, not blacks, women, homosexuals, or Mexicans. We–at least the liberal part of “we”– turned away from our religion and our civilization; we made war on property and marriage; we rejected Haydn and Sophocles in favor of John Cage and Kate Chopin. We have emasculated ourselves, pithed our brains, destroyed our vision and hearing …”

I believe this is the very impulse evinced in the blog posts that dismiss the Wembley footage. It’s left-liberalism at its seeming suavest.

Update II (Nov. 5): DEMOGRAPHICS? DIDDLYSQUAT! It is a great shame that the Jacobinism of the Steyns of the world is mistaken for a coherent defense of the West, or for the good kind of nationhood, for that matter. A little reminder: When the barbarians of the banlieusard rioted through France in November of 2005, one neoconservative troika—Mark Steyn, Jonah Goldberg, Frederick Kempe—fingered French racism and snobbery in marginalizing its poor Maghrebis. France, in this unholy trinity’s assessment, fell short in offering its Third Worlders freebies and fraternité.

From “Get With The Global Program, Gaul”:

When America’s news cartel woke up to one of 2005’s biggest stories—Muslims running riot across France—the response from many a neoconservative was to gloat.
The Schadenfreude was tinged with a sense of American superiority [can you say Steyn?]. It’s not happening here because we’re better. And why are we superior? To listen to their accounts, it’s because we’ve submerged or erased aspects of the American identity.
Taking the Frank out of the French hasn’t been as easy. As the famed (neoconservative) Francis Fukuyama has observed, in Europe “identity remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory.” How gauche.

Steyn, your “One-Man Global Content Provider,” is, predictably, wrong. Demographics are NOT destiny. Demographics are the excuse of statists (such as our neoconservative contingent) to persevere with immigration policies that destroy western civil society and shore up the western state. (I will incorporate these idea in a column.)

Did the now-waning West become great because it outbred the rest of the world? Ridiculous! The West was once great becasue of human capital—innovation, exploration, science, philosophy; because of superior ideas, and the willingness to defend such a civilization.

Of course, if I spouted the silly Steyn line I’d be rich.