Iran warns Switzerland of consequences over minaret ban

From AFP

Iran urges Bern not to enforce minaret ban

(AFP) – 14 hours ago

TEHRAN — Iran warned Switzerland on Saturday of “consequences” over a referendum banning the building of new mosque minarets and urged Bern not to enforce the ban, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The vote went “against the prestige of a country which claims to be an advocate of democracy and human rights,” Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told Swiss counterpart Micheline Calmy-Rey in a telephone call, quoted by IRNA.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki

Mottaki said last week’s referendum would “damage Switzerland’s image as a pioneer of respecting human rights among Muslims’ public opinion.”

“Values such as tolerance, dialogue and respecting others’ religions should never be put to referendum,” he argued, warning Switzerland of the “consequences” of anti-Islamic acts, IRNA reported.

The foreign minister hoped the Bern government would soon “take necessary steps and find a constitutional way to prevent imposition of the ban.”

IRNA said Switzerland’s ambassador in Tehran was summoned on Saturday before the foreign ministry, which protested against the minaret ban which was backed by more than 57 percent of voters who cast their ballot on November 29.

Calmy-Rey said the referendum was carried out against the will of the Swiss government, which would “use all its means to support Muslims rights,” the IRNA report added.

The referendum on a constitutional ban on minarets was proposed by a rightwing Swiss party and had not been expected to succeed.

Besides the government, the ban was opposed by the bulk of Switzerland’s political parties as well as the economic establishment.

It drew widespread criticism from the United Nations, Muslim states, fellow European countries and the Vatican.

7 Replies to “Iran warns Switzerland of consequences over minaret ban”

  1. I’ve been following this story with mild interest. What has been most interesting to me is not the referendum itself but the reaction the media has given and the controversy it has created. The whole thing feels very surreal, like I went to sleep one day with visions of democratic freedoms dancing in my head and woke up in a hypersensitive world that values the feelings of minority religious groups over democracy, secularism and freedom.

    Let’s cut through the hyperbole and get right down to it. The liberal media is completely aghast that free people have stood up and overwhelmingly rejected Islam, much like Islamic Fundamentalists have rejected any notion of peace and societal integration with the west. Now we are supposed to care what Iran thinks on this issue? When did one of the most fascist regimes in the world dictate to us how we should govern ourselves?

    But let’s forget about Iran, the UN, the Media and Islam for a moment. The far more important issue to me, the completely secular, religiously indifferent fellow who loathes Bill O’Reilly and Fundamentalist Christians as much as I hate Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, is the the ability of countries like Switzerland to to act as a free and autonomous country and to pass and enforce laws passed democratically by it’s own citizens.

    Once the media, the UN, liberal intellectuals or Iran start dictating and interfering with how sovereign nations conduct there own internal affairs… I start to get a bit cranky.

  2. Al,
    Well said. I’m not at all surprised by the reaction of Muslim nations, and I’m even not surprised by the reaction of the Swiss government itself, the media, or other European nations. Their response has been: ” Those bastard Swiss! How dare the people openly vote, how undemocratic! And therein lies the fundamental problem.

  3. I am amazed at how mild the response is by the muslims. The establishment is playing ball as usual with thier rhetoric of hatred to the democracy showed in the state of Switzerland.But the muslims can only manage a few lame comments about this issue. Where are the seething masses burning embassies, killing people and destroying people’s peace and sense of security. Nothing. I despair at these muslims. They are not capable of even rioting for Allah like they used. Maybe two episodes of worldwide rioting wore them out. I feel that they may have learnt that rioting achieves nothing. The cartoon of mohammad became an icon and is now one of the most well know cartoons in the world. The pope never budged. He is still sitting in Rome. Enjoying the glory of Renaissance Art and culture and a modern Catholic church in one of the most dynamic areas in the world: Western Europe. Well come on you know you want to riot don’t you Mr Mohammadan?

  4. What I found galling and still do, is the fact that many Jewish organizations and Jewish bloggers came to the defense of muslims in Switzerland. That is hard to understand and hard to swallow.

  5. “The vote went “against the prestige of a country which claims to be an advocate of democracy and human rights,” Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told Swiss counterpart Micheline Calmy-Rey in a telephone call, quoted by IRNA.”

    lol, the irony, self deception taking to the point of psychosis.

  6. Hugh Fitzgerald commented on the reaction to the ban from the Eurodhimmis a few days ago, by correctly writing that ‘It is not the “hard right” and not the “far-right” that caused 60% of Swiss voters to vote for the minaret ban. It is the behavior of Muslims, all over the world, supported by texts which some of those Muslims — enough, apparently — adduce as the reasons for their behavior. The surprising thing is not that nearly 60% voted for the ban on minarets , but why the vote was not 95% in favor.’ And, indeed, unlike what the lies and BS peddled by the mainstream media would have us believe, the Swiss did not vote for the ban out of “ignorance” and/or “fear”, or “islamophobia” (basically a non-existing expression, since a phobia is an irrational fear of something; unlike the real concerns that anyone concerned over the survival of Western Civilization should voice over mahoundianism.) On the contrary, the fearmongering, the attempts to blindfold voters and the efforts to mislead them into surrender rained down on the Swiss public from the media, their political leaders, their business and religious leaders and you name it like the storms that precede and follow hurricanes. Moreover, the fact that the vote of women concerned over the impact that more islam in Switzerland could have on their hard-won rights that turned the tide in favor of the ban show that the ignorance card cannot be played to explain the Swiss decision. The Swiss knew what was at stake, and they didn’t let themselves be fooled.

    Such facts make BS like an “analysis” shown on al-CNN’s Prism, just a few hours ago, by Octavia Nasr, that disgusting, lying, venomous instrument of mahoundian supremacy all the more sickening. Looking like she was on the verge of tears through the whole thing, she ranted about how the Swiss had been conned into voting for the ban out of “fear” and “ignorance”; that the campaign posters for the ban were clearly “islamophobic”, and that “the half” of the Swiss (42,5% is far from representing half of the voters) voting against the ban proved that “not the whole country was ‘racist’.” Following that, she called on mahoundians to get the word out on how their sick cult was nothing but tolerance, love, peace and understanding (for real, she said that!!!) That was the same Octavia Nasr that once said, while commenting on a case of an-eye-for-an-eye punishment in Iran, that sharia law wasn’t this medieval, cruel, violent or misogynistic set of rules that the West perceived it to be, but rather something “fluid”, “flexible” and “which could therefore easily adapt to modern times.”

    Too bad for such lying media whores that more and more people (though yet still not as many as I’d like to see) no longer gets sold on their BS as easily as they once used to. But the fact that Swiss-style direct democracy isn’t available to everyone in the West will still keep the job of those on our side a lot harder than it would otherwise be.

  7. Just to add a bit more to what I’ve written about how there was no ignorance and no misinformation whatsoever in the Swiss voters’ decision, yesterday my wife and I watched a show on Swiss TV called Arena, which aired last Friday, where Swiss politicians debated the ban. In between the topics of discussion, interviews with voters who backed the prohibition were shown. And, far from not being able to back their decision with solid arguments, those voters made it clear that they knew exactly that there was a risk that demands for sharia law, accommodation for barbaric bedouin practices and a roll-back of human rights if a clear message hadn’t been sent to mahoundians living in Switzerland that THEY had to adapt to their host country, and that Switzerland would NOT adapt to mahoundianism instead.

    Hugh Fitzgerald often writes about how more and more people in the civilized Western world have started to learn about islam on their own, not by being fed televised islamophilic garbage by the likes of Ibrahim Hooper or Octavia Nasr, but by actually reading Mein Qurampf, the Hadith, and studying the 1400-year-old history of mahoundian imperialism, genocide and hostility to everything and everyone non-mahoundian; by observing the aggressive behavior of mahoundians everywhere; and how, in contrast with immigrants to the West from non-mahoundian countries and their children, they stand out in their unique unwillingness to assimilate and demands that their host countries adapt to mahoundianism instead. And that’s exactly what the Swiss have done. They’ve learned about mahoundianism and decided that it shouldn’t be given any chances to replace Western values and human rights with barbarism, bedouin nazism and sharia.

    Just like John Quincy Adams, who described mahoundian doctrine as nothing but violence and lust, and wrote about how degrading to women and the Western notions of family life polygamy made it; who learned about mahoundianism on his own, instead of believing any nonsense that an Octavia Nasr might have tried to have him believe was the truth (if there had been any Octavia Nasrs trying to fool gullible and ignorant people back when he was alive) about an intolerant, racist, misogynistic, barbaric, supremacist, violent and backwards political ideology masquerading as a religion, it is the willingness and interest of Westerners to learn what mahoundianism is truly all about that have helped them (though still not in large enough numbers) understand what’s at stake in the fight against mahoundianism. And this fact, coupled with how the islamophilic mainstream media is failing to get too many of us sold on its pro-mahound trash are reasons for optimism in my opinion, and a sign that our side is becoming stronger for the fights that lie ahead.