I'm conflicted about the Swiss minaret thing. If you don't like evangelists knocking on your door..

[HamdenRice]

can you defend minarets?

Because it's not just an architectural feature; it's often used to give the call to prayer.

I used to live in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a few blocks from the mosque from which the 1993 WTC attacks were partly planned. It hosted the "blind Sheikh" and was very radical. The street where the mosque was housed a very small Muslim community -- mostly West African, Yemeni and assorted other people drawn to the Mosque and Islamic book shops.

The larger neighborhood was overwhelmingly African American and West Indian -- which is to say Christian.

Traditionally, a person would go into the top of the marinet to give the call to prayer. In this case, they hooked up some sort of high powered speaker system. Starting at 5 AM, the mosque blasted the call to prayer -- for a total of five times a day. There was no need for an alarm clock; they regulated our sleeping cycle. From about 10 blocks away, it sounded like someone was shouting in my ear. I suppose you could say the same thing about church bells, but bells generally tell time, while it was clear that the purpose of the minaret wasn't to call the people within the 1 block radius of the mosque, but to proclaim to the infidels.

Obviously these guys were fanatics and many of them ended up in prison anyway. Last time I was in the neighborhood, the mosque had been turned into a retail store.

While it's obviously unfair to completely ban minarets, it's also clear that any local government has the right to regulate them from becoming either an acoustic nuisance or architectural oddity -- along with church towers or any other structure that impinges on others' quality of life.

[LeftishBrit]

1. As regards acoustic problems, one can introduce regulations about noise levels...

and many places do. After all, church bells can also create excessive noise if unregulated; and for that matter so can many non-religious practices!

As regards 'architectural oddities', that ship sailed quite a long time ago as regards Swiss architecture!

[no_hypocrisy]

2. OTOH, in other countries, Christian symbols can be seen in public venues.

When I was in Germany, there are makescript shrines with crucifixes where flowers are left and residents can pray, etc. along public walkways, mostly in towns rather than cities. If you allow one religion, it's unfair to deny another religion.

[HamdenRice]

4. It's not comparable to a shrine or place of worship. The point of the minaret is call to prayer

which is very, very LOUD. I think it can be compared to church bells, but the church bell has no religious message content -- it's just telling time.

[enough]

3. I read yesterday that they are not used for the call to prayer in Switzerland.

In the NY Times, I think. Sorry don't have time to look for the link right now.

[HamdenRice]

6. That's good -- I wonder whether it's because of pre-existing regulations

My main concern is the enforced hearing of basically a sermon at very loud volume.

[snagglepuss]

8. Switzerland has strict building codes for instance steel and glass towers aren't

permitted nor are McDonald arches. What has riled the Swiss is that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan once compared mosques to Islam's military barracks and called "the minarets our bayonets."

[HamdenRice]

11. That's exactly the attitude I find intolerable

The minaret as sort of blasting Islam to the infidels -- bayonets in the inevitable conversion.

It really is forced listening to a religious message.

[LeftishBrit]

7. I believe you are right

And in some other countries, mosques may need to get permission from the local authorities before they can issue the call to prayer in this way, because of the noise issue (such a request by a mosque here in Oxford is being considered at the moment).

[Djinn]

5. simple, ban the noise

I live near churches and mosques, the bells annoy me as much as the call does. People in my neighbourhood have had pubs closed down for noise but religions can wake me up every weekend without fear.

[Jim__]

9. My understanding is that the minarets were banned because they were foreign.

They changed the look of Switzerland.

I agree with you about the noise, it should definitely be outlawed - at least during normal sleep time.

The bigger issue here seems to be that we still have great difficulty having different cultures live side-by-side. For all our self-proclaimed sophistication, xenophobia appears to be an integral part of human nature. I'm not sure how we go about solving that.

[tazkcmo]

10. Call to prayer?

What about using the phone?

[Warpy]

12. It's the Muslim equivalent of church bells

and as long as the call isn't unreasonably loud, I wouldn't mind it. It's just more flavor to urban background noise.

I do mind recorded church bells being played at top volume, although I never minded the real bells that used to toll the hour and half hour when I was growing up. It helped me know when to turn up for meals when I was too little to have a watch.

There are worse noises than muezzins, like jackhammers, squalling babies, blasting, people fighting.

I honestly don't get this, but I realize that the majority feel their culture is under attack by a minority. There's a lot of that going around, as the antigay votes in California and Maine demonstrated.

The majority will always vote to strip rights from a minority if they're allowed to. It's why we have the Bill of Rights to prevent them from doing so.

The Swiss don't have that document, though, so tyranny by the majority is business as usual.

[HamdenRice]

13. Church bells have no verbal content.They tell time. Big Ben at Parliament isn't a church & does also

See the post above about what the Turkish official had to say. Some, certainly not all, mosques see the call to prayer as a form of evangelism. That's certainly what the "terror mosque" in Brooklyn seemed to believe.

The call to prayer pipes religious content right into your apartment -- kind of like having to listen to Pat Robertson 5 times a day.

[Quantess]

14. They are pretty phallic looking.

Maybe the opposition to minarets is partly due to the esthetics.