Muslim countries have been threatening to take economic action against Switzerland for the recent plebiscite that resulted in a ban on the construction of future minarets. The hypocrisy of these countries that do not permit the construction of churches or synagogues, or the open and free worship of religions other than Islam, is monumental.
The Swiss vote did not result in the destruction of existing minarets or in any restriction on the building of mosques or the free and open worship of Islam in Switzerland.
It would be nice if leftist writers in the free world would write something about the lack of religious freedoms in the Islamic world, but they cannot break out of their self-imposed ideology of guilt and blame against the West for its supposed transgressions.
A case in point is a recent column by Eric Margolis, in the Winnipeg Sun, who says he has a “deep love” of Switzerland where he spent some time as a youth, but goes on to say he has no use for the Swiss who are “xenophobic” and “racist”. They are also “fiercely nationalistic”, as if that were a fault for which they should be embarrassed.
It is interesting to compare this alleged xenophobic, racist and very nationalistic European country with Canada, which is not particularly nationalistic, and is not generally considered xenophobic or racist. About 19.8% of our population is made up of immigrants compared to 25% of the Swiss population. Odd that a nationalist, racist and xenophobic country would have such a high percentage. Canada takes in nearly 300,000 new immigrants a year, yet we still lag Switzerland.
Margolis claims that the persecution of the Muslims is exactly like that of the Jews under the Nazis.
What utter nonsense.
The closer parallel would be how Muslim countries treat Jews and Christians and Infidels.
The 20th century accusation against Jews being a threat to Europe was entirely fictional and the case against them being a “race” of people who were sub-human, rather than simply adherents of a religion, was equally concocted out of thin air. The Jews made the effort to integrate with the European society, and as Naill Ferguson has pointed out, there was a great deal of inter-religious marriage. Furthermore, the authorities, the elites and the establishment in Europe all collaborated in this fiction to suppress and eventually to nearly destroy European Jewry.
In contrast, European elites treat Muslims with kid gloves. Muslims are reluctant to integrate, they do not intermarry and prefer spouses from their old countries to Muslims that have been Europeanized, and yet they are not treated as if they are sub-human the way the Jews were. In Europe, as in Canada and the United States, the majority of reported hate crimes still continue to be directed against Jews, not Muslims.
It is the politically dispossessed European nationalists who are threatened by these European political elites who decry nationalism in the name of multiculturalism.
Margolis says he admires the Swiss plebiscite system, but prays that the organs of the state in the hands of the right-headed people will overturn the will of the electorate. It doesn’t occur to Margolis that if that is how the people feel about this subject perhaps the elites should be doing something to address the concerns of the general public rather than branding them all as unthinking racists.
This is typical leftist-elitist thinking – it is fine to have an appearance of democracy as long as the rabble don’t take it too seriously and prevent their betters doing the necessary things that are for their own best interests which the proletariart are incapable of determining for themselves. It is a strange sentiment coming from a guy who claims he is a Republican conservative.
It may well be that the Muslims in Switzerland are all pussycats, as Margolis claims they are, but the Swiss have television sets, the Internet, and newspapers, just as the rest of us do, and they can read the writing on the wall of what will eventually happen to European culture in an Islamic-dominated Europe.
Nonie Darwish, the expatriate Egyptian, makes the point that the rich culture of ancient Egypt was left to be buried in the sands of the desert by the Muslims for whom history starts with Mohammed. It was the European invaders from France and England who took an interest in Egypt and saved and resurrected its glorious past.
The Swiss have started down the road of saving their culture, despite their elites, not with their assistance. This is a cultural battle, not a racist one.
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