Perhaps rather than considering this an isolated, weird incident, it should be considered within the wider context of Muslim immigration, which is upsetting most Europeans. According to those holding racists and xenophobic views Hitler managed to “clear” Europe of Jews, who took over USA. They call US government “ZOG”, or Zionist Occupied Government. Yet most Jews integrated well in USA, as the biggest wave of Jews settlement started before WW2. The business of hate is not doing well in USA. It is doing far better in Europe, where the new wave of Muslim migration is rather large and poorly integrated. European Muslims are kept at the periphery of the society and as such, extremist propaganda finds fertile ground, further justifying in the eyes of the majority Muslims’ isolation and discrimination.
 | “More than 57% of voters and 22 out of 26 cantons - or provinces - voted in favour of the ban.” |  |
Switzerland is a very advanced direct democracy, known for quickly implementing laws and regulations through referendum. The adoption of decidedly anti-Islamic laws is not an isolated occurrence, but rather the expression of a generalized xenophobic and intolerant sentiment in the old continent. Austria, as ever, led the way through one of the first (if not the very first) openly racist, jingoistic and nationalist government in the 90’s. In France, the debate centered around laicism, their brand of secularism, and the interdiction of religious symbols. The conflict between the "old people" conservatism and the "social" conservatism of the socialist government (a subtle contradiction in terms) has resulted in the Paris riots.
Why the conflict? Europe is dying. The population is getting older and the birthrate is lower than the death rate. Meanwhile, as it always is the case with poor people whose women are abused, the Muslim population is exploding. Therefore, the once tolerant and open old Europe has its “Fall of the Roman Empire” ancestral fears stirred up again.
The Swiss People Party (SVP) is no stranger to controversy. It reflects the fears and insecurities of a middle and lower class which feels threatened by the rise of the Muslim migration. Over 20% of the population is now foreign and most are not and will not become citizens, even those born there.
A recent study by the Federal Department for Foreigners found that while, at first glance, foreigners appear to be committing more crime than the Swiss, foreigners, especially young men, are also more likely to be charged - whereas young Swiss may be let off with a caution for the same offence. The study also found that young foreigners living in Switzerland were more likely to be unemployed and living in socially deprived backgrounds, than the Swiss.
SVP is at it again, this time pushing through a ban on minarets in the Zurich city council. Switzerland is home to 3-400000 Muslims who make up only 4% of the population. It has hundreds of mosques but only FOUR have minarets in the country.
The strong reaction to what small communities see as Islamic intransigence has engulfed not only Europe, but also small-town Quebec.
Hérouxville made international headlines after its city council approved a long list of rules that, among other edicts, forbids women from covering their faces in schools, bans female circumcision, and explains the tradition of Christmas trees. (…)
Hérouxville leaders had no choice but to create the code because Quebec has its head in the sand when it comes to the delicate subject of accommodating immigrants, said Mario Dumont, leader of Action démocratique du Québec.
"Anybody who looks at the way things are evolving in the last year or so, it's obvious that things are slipping."
It now seems that these communities are trying to protect the values of liberal democracy by becoming more bigoted and intolerant. Is this really a winning direction?
A few centuries ago, the main receivers of hate were the Gypsies and the Jews. Today we find the Roma (Gypsies New Generation) and Arabs / Muslims in this unenviable position. Little has changed.
Sources / More info: wiki-svp, bbc-black-sheep, bbc-zurich-poster, bbc-swiss-minarets, bbc-open-mosque, wiki-unrest-france, cbc-Hérouxville, cbc-reject, yt-swiss-muslim
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This was the most IGNORANT, RIDICULOUS article I've ever read by someone claiming to be "libertarian".
ReplyDeleteI myself am Swiss and ANARCHO-CAPITALIST and I know the entire Islam issue inside out, which clearly the author of this article does not!
For starters, let me correct this unbelievable and pathetic LIE about Switzerland being "xenophobic":
- Switzerland has 22.5% legal foreign residents, probably more than any other country in the world.
- Foreigners have always been welcome and integrate extremely well. I myself have almost only foreign friends and business partners. I worked with Hindus and Sikhs, with Americans, Latin Americans, Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai. My neighbors are Tunisian and Albanian and those guys I happen to like very much. My wife is Belorussian.
No one is against "foreigners" here. We've had many votes demanding a limitation for immigration, all of which were rejected with large majorities. Swiss people voted on allowing the free circulation of Europeans.
So obviously, the rejection of Minarets has NOTHING to do with "xenophobia" or "racism".
As Libertarian, you should (but apparently don't) know that Islam is the most profoundly FASCIST and OPPRESSIVE ideology that ever existed. It is infinitely worse than Communism and Nazism, because contrary to these, it does not ever need to be "right" and to "work".
Islam never makes a falsifiable claim. For both, Communism and Nazism, there are methods to decide if they "work" (according to their own terms) or not. In Islam, there is nothing like it.
Anyone who questions Islam as Muslim is automatically an Apostate and that makes him a candidate for a death sentence. The entire ideology is established by the Quran and the Hadiths. The Quran is considered the word of god and hence infallible. Hence it is IMPOSSIBLE to reform Islam, as reform would require that certain passages of the Quran be altered or ignored.
One cannot be a Muslim without accepting that there is an eternal war against non-Muslims. Of course a person can claim to be a Muslim but not really believe any of this, but if his mental defection becomes known, he is at great risk.
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ReplyDeleteAnyone who thinks that it is even remotely possible to achieve co-existence between liberty and Islam is either totally ignorant or a fool.
Given the evolution of the population of Europe, it is a mathematical certainty that - without any drastic and so far totally unimaginable change - Muslims WILL become the majority population of Europe within the next 50 years.
Anyone who doesn't see that is exactly like those who didn't understand the threat of Communism or Nazism in the 1920/30s.
This situation has been created by the European governments by not just "tolerating" immigration but by SUBSIDIZING it - massively - and specifically from Muslim countries. This has nothing to do with the Libertarian concept of free migration, which does NOT condone government aid to those who migrate.
Muslims exploit the Western tradition of freedom to impose Fascism. Intentionally! Most Muslim immigrants are NOT individuals who migrate for their own benefit, but they are TROOPS sent to invade a hostile territory, a fact that has been openly admitted by several Muslim leaders. They even BRAG about it!
Now no Libertarian can be retarded enough to believe that freedom can grow under hostile attacks, especially when there is not even a defensible front line.
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ReplyDeleteThe most likely result of this falsely "liberal" approach to Muslim immigration is that we will get any or all of the following:
- a gradual installation of Islam that will simply strangle all liberty to death by exploiting democracy (which they already do with great success in many European regions)
- CIVIL WAR
- New fascist movements that are organizing against the Muslim takeover, but which will obviously not just fight Muslims. They will come with the entire rat's tail of oppression we saw under Nazism.
Don't ever forget that Nazis were actually ALLIED with Muslims in WWII. There were Muslim SS battalions which showed such cruelty that even some German SS officers were disgusted. (Not all German officers were evil, not even in the SS - e.g. Rommel was fundamentally a good person who happened to fight for the wrong masters).
In short, anyone who doesn't get this development and supports Islam - especially out of a principle of "tolerance" - is digging his own grave. Many classical liberals understood the threat of Islam very well, e.g. Chateaubriand, Constant de Rebecque, Voltaire and Goethe.
Islam is not a new enemy of freedom, it is the oldest oppressive ideology that is still enduring and causing immense harm around the world. So this has NOTHING to do with 9/11, Bush or the "War on Terror".
Swiss people sometimes have a very good intuition for what is right and wrong and for what threatens our freedom. That's why they rejected joining the EU - twice - and only accepted joining the UN on the second vote after 20 years and only by a margin of 400 votes; a really stupid move, too!
The prohibition of minarets was absolutely not the question. The referendum was really about whether or not Swiss people reject Islam per se and the answer is very clear: Swiss people do NOT want to live with or under Islam.
The funny thing is that the immense majority of Europeans share this feeling, but they don't have any possibility to express their opinion in a politically relevant way. No party is willing to run on this platform and they can't hold referenda. So all they have are polls. Every poll in Europe after the Swiss vote showed that 58 - 89% of Europeans were against Islam.
Europeans - contrary to their governments - are NOT stupid! (at least not all of them).
So the last question is: should we use government force against Islam?
Well for starters, we should STOP government from using its power to HELP Islam to spread:
- Support the FULL right to free speech, so that all the truth about Islam can be told without threats of prosecution for "racism" (which is a ridiculous accusation)
- No more subsidies for mosques, not even hidden ones
- No more money to support immigrants
- No more social security payments to support Muslims and their large families; if they want large families, let them pay for their own kids, 100% of the costs
- Expel any immigrant who commits a crime against person or property or fraud to obtain social security payments (which is exactly what the "sheep" initiative demanded, a perfectly legitimate and libertarian approach); that would get rid of very large numbers of Muslims; 70% of all prisoners throughout Europe are now Muslims
- do NOT award citizenship to people who do not accept the principles of liberty they invoke to get us to accept them. Anyone who demands rights must also accept to grant the exact same rights to everyone else.
I hope you get it at this point, but I'm open to debate. The issue is complex and appears difficult from a libertarian point of view, although it really is very simple once one knows the entire context.
Stefan Metzeler
Pro Libertate
ISIL
Institut Constant de Rebecque
Correcting some more FACTUAL ERRORS:
ReplyDelete"The Swiss People Party (SVP) is no stranger to controversy. It reflects the fears and insecurities of a middle and lower class which feels threatened by the rise of the Muslim migration."
BULLSHIT!
SVP is the most Classical Liberal party in Switzerland, the only one that is even remotely PRO-FREEDOM, for LOW TAXES, REDUCED GOVERNMENT, ANTI-EU and against centralization. SVP wants power to move back to the cities, villages and cantons instead of the federal government.
Clearly, this is the opposite of all fascist parties in history!
"Over 20% [22.5%!!!] of the population is now foreign and most are not and will not become citizens, even those born there."
A gigantic LIE: currently, Switzerland hands out passports at a rate of 50'000 per year for a population of 7.8 million, including the foreign born.
Every foreigner who fulfills minimal criteria can become a Swiss citizen. Those married to a Swiss citizen within 6 years, those born here by the age of 18 and others after 12 years of residence.
The only demand is that they integrated culturally, that they are not criminal, that they learned one of the 4 national languages and are self-supporting.
"A recent study by the Federal Department for Foreigners found that while, at first glance, foreigners appear to be committing more crime than the Swiss, foreigners, especially young men, are also more likely to be charged"
THAT IS SUCH A LOAD OF BULL!!!
They are more likely to be charged BECAUSE THEY COMMIT FAR MORE SERIOUS CRIMES! And the punishment remains ridiculous compared to the severity of the crimes these guys commit.
To end up in prison in Switzerland, you have to commit a VERY serious crime. Even repeat drug dealers don't go to jail. Only violent crime or serious property crimes will do that. And 70-80% of all prisoners are now foreigners - mostly from a very small number of countries: ex-Yugoslavia, Albania, Turkey, Georgia, the Middle East, North Africa and Nigeria.
Foreigners are treated with kids gloves, which is why they escalated the level of violence (not to mention the stupid ban on gun carry!)
Worse: the left-wing parties pushed very hard to distribute Swiss passports even to violent young foreigners in order to ALTER THE STATISTICS, so that criminal foreigners show up as "Swiss".
"whereas young Swiss may be let off with a caution for the same offence"
Except that cultural Swiss people DO NOT COMMIT THE SAME OFFENSES! And in the rare cases when they do, THEY ARE JUDGED MORE HARSHLY.
"The study also found that young foreigners living in Switzerland were more likely to be unemployed and living in socially deprived backgrounds, than the Swiss"
Another gigantic lie! In fact, secondos (children of immigrants) are likely to achieve higher degrees and earn a higher income than the average Swiss person - at least for immigrants of European background (Italy, Portugal, France, Germany etc.) and they make up the majority of the immigration. That's due to the AMBITION that immigrants mobilize for their kids, pushing them much harder than Swiss people.
Ah, I forgot: the reason many foreigners do NOT become Swiss is because THEY DON'T ASK FOR IT!
ReplyDeleteAfter 5 years of residence, foreigners get the C-Permit, which is the equivalent of a US Green card. It gives them all the same rights as Swiss people, except:
- the can't vote or be elected, except in some cantons and cities where they allow long-term resident foreigners to do both at the local / canton level.
- they DO NOT HAVE TO DO MILITARY SERVICE, which is the main reason most men decide not to apply for citizenship before the age of 40 and then they usually don't bother, because they consider that it will give them no benefits.
- If they acquire the Swiss citizenship, many will lose their previous citizenship; not because of Switzerland, but because their homeland doesn't allow dual citizenship.
- They want their children to acquire their former citizenship.
And another fact that I absolutely need to add:
Close to 50% of the members of SVP are FORMER IMMIGRANTS who want to defend the country they immigrated to precisely because they liked it the way it was: LIBERAL, LOW TAX, TOLERANT.
Very often, well integrated Albanians (to take one example) are the first to demand that criminal Albanians be expelled, so that they don't ruin their reputation.
As for the claim that SVP members are "lower class" and "uneducated", that's yet another lie: the very large share of the members of SVP are ENTREPRENEURS, doctors, engineers etc.
The class you do not find there are all the parasites such as teachers and bureaucrats, who have very high income, very little actual qualifications and who fill the ranks of the Socialist party.
First of all, thank you for your comments, even though some contain direct insults. If you want to continue debating this issue, I suggest you give up ad hominem and focus instead on the topic.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what you are doing throughout most of your write-up is in fact confirming the initial thesis, namely that the measure of banning minarets is xenophobic in general and anti-islamic in particular, since there are only 4 minarets in the country.
You make a number of claims in your article, so rather than answering all of them separately, I'd much rather publish your entire article as a rebuttal as it is easier to respond to it thus.