Q: What's your reaction to Sunday's decision by voters in Switzerland toban construction of minarets, the slender towers from which Muslims arecalled to daily prayers?
A. Sad. Disappointed. And a frankly, more than a little afraid. Ironically however my growing apprehension isn’t about the Muslims but rather about the Swiss people and more broadly, the re-emergence and validation of societal mob-action motivated by fear. The posters created by proponents of the ban are menacing – and to think that they are in reference to a prayer tower is absolutely terrifying to me as an example of propaganda created by leadership in a country that we normally think of as the poster child for tolerance.
As a Christian, upper middle class privileged American living in a predominantly White suburban neighborhood and working as a senior executive in a multi-billion dollar corporation, I can relate to the visceral fear that the close presence of a people that has publicly denied many of my cultural values evokes. When I’m at my best I see Muslims as my neighbors, but I’m always aware that there’s a strong underlying thread of difference between us and sometimes that difference has provoked “them” to violent actions against “us”. So if we’re all going to live together peaceably it seems reasonable that the best course is for them to minimize my discomfort with our differences by acting more like me – after all, if they came to live in my neighborhood I’m assuming that they like what we have to offer and they should work hard to fit in. Establishing architectural permanent markers of our differences, i.e. a minaret, is clearly contraindicated with assimilation from that perspective. And this is one of the arguments that the proponents of the ban persuasively made.
But then I recall childhood memories of when my family became the first African Americans to move into an all-White neighborhood in the far western Chicago suburbs in 1967. The fear of our soon-to-be neighbors was palatable. There were neighborhood meetings, some of which devolved into threats – and that was before we even physically had moved in and begun to make any changes to the property or entice our stereotypical Black friends to visit from the city or the South and change the tenor of the safe haven that our neighbors had created for themselves, blocking out the discomfort that the civil rights movement was creating in other parts of the area. Their approach to our presence was to suggest, and then insist, on 100% assimilation. We were welcome as long as we were willing to leave our “Blackness” behind when we moved in.
Of course that didn’t really work. Both because we didn’t want to and probably because we couldn’t have authentically done so anyway. But that worked out better for the neighbors anyway because we all were enhanced and transformed by forced exposure to the ways of those we feared. We had a base of commonality (i.e. we both wanted the things that brought us to live in the same neighborhood) and that gave us a neutral zone from which to acknowledge, explore, and in some cases even appreciate, our differences.
I’d like to believe that this same sort of transformation was beginning to take place in Switzerland, and in other places, where people of different faith traditions are getting to know and appreciate each other as human beings vs. stereotypes. Perhaps that is why Mutalip Karaademi finally felt comfortable enough with his neighbors to request that a minaret be added to the local mosque.
But clearly his neighbors didn’t feel nearly as comfortable. And reaction of the Swiss people seems to send the message that Switzerland is and should be for the Swiss, and those who wish to re-create themselves in the Swiss image – the “right” image. And that is what I find frightening. Not just the lack of tolerance but the implication that assimilation is the gold standard – and those who can’t or won’t assimilate are the enemy.
What is my reaction to the vote in Switzerland? Sadness, disappointment and fear that somehow tolerance becomes redefined as “sameness” and fear of difference becomes a valid rationale for restriction of human and civil rights.
But also hope - based on the reaction of many in the international community to the vote. Perhaps this will just mark the painful beginning of a new phase of dialogue in the global community.
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