Ban the minaret!

[imomus]

Ban this, ban that! No, we don't mean business! We the Swiss would never ban that! No, ban the poor, ban the different! Ban and stigmatize the things the poor and the different do, the shapes they wear and build! Don't ban the rich! Court the rich! Attract them by enabling capital, incentivising business, indemnifying the banks, making their risk public and their profit private! But minarets, veils, burkas -- ban, ban, ban! Ban in the name of freedom! Ban in the name of feminism! Ban in the name of national identity! Ban in the name of fear!



On Sunday, the Swiss voted in a referendum to ban the construction of new minarets. Existing minarets can stay, but new ones cannot be built. The measure will now pass into Swiss law. A particular building shape is now forbidden. A 4% minority of the Swiss population -- also, and not coincidentally, its poorest 4% -- has been told that its buildings "endanger Swiss security". Banners held up banners in front of models of minarets that declared: "That is not my Switzerland".

In late 2004, France banned the wearing of Islamic headscarves in schools. Alain Badiou wrote at the time: "France has astonished the world. After the tragedies, the farce."

"France has finally found a problem worthy of itself: the scarf draping the heads of a few girls. Decadence can be said to have been stopped in this country. The Muslim invasion, long diagnosed by Le Pen and confirmed nowadays by a slew of indubitable intellectuals, has found its interlocutor. The battle of Poitiers was kid's stuff, Charles Martel, only a hired gun. But Chirac, the Socialists, feminists and Enlightenment intellectuals suffering from Islamophobia will win the battle of the headscarf."

Badiou demolishes, in this splendidly angry, numbered text, the arguments that banning the headscarf is either a feminist or enlightenment gesture: "Either it's the father and eldest brother, and "feministly" the hijab must be torn off, or it's the girl herself standing by her belief, and "laically" it must be torn off. There is no good headscarf. Bareheaded! Everywhere! ...Everyone must go out bareheaded.

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"One will never go into raptures enough over feminism's singular progression. Starting off with women's liberation, nowadays feminism avers that the "freedom" acquired is so obligatory that it requires girls (and not a single boy!) to be excluded owing to the sole fact of their dressing accoutrements."

Badiou is quite clear about what really underlies the ban.

"In truth of fact, the Scarfed Law expresses one thing and one thing alone: fear. Westerners in general, the French in particular, are but a shivering, fearful lot. What are they afraid of? Barbarians, as usual. Those from within, i.e. the "young suburbanites"; those from without, i.e. "Islamist terrorists." Why are they frightened? Because they are guilty, but claim to be innocent. They are guilty of having renounced and attempted to annihilate -- ever since the 1980s -- every kind of emancipatory politics, every revolutionary form of Reason, and every true assertion of something else. Guilty of clutching at their lousy privileges. Guilty of being but old children playing with their manifold purchases. Yes, indeed, "in a long childhood, they have been made to age." They are thus afraid of everything a little less aged. A stubborn young lady, for instance."

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This is confirmed in European coverage of the Swiss minaret ban: "The Belgian newspaper Le Soir noted that some people found minarets "scary," and added, "There is a strong chance that if there was a vote in Belgium, a majority of citizens would be against it too."

The only thing that would prevent the Germans enacting similar bans would be the all-too-resonant similarity to the persecution of a religion in their 20th century history. And the EU's human rights stance. Here's the EU's human rights commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg, righteously hammering Sarkozy as well as the Swiss (Sarkozy is currently leading a debate on whether the burka should be banned in France; his own stated position is that the burka "is not welcome"):

"In a statement on the Swiss vote, Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, warned against narrowly defining national identity and pinpointed France's debate as a potential "trap of promoting one single identity, which defines who is included and, by extension, who is excluded."

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Badiou points out that Islam is, in France, the religion of the poor. This is its real crime; to be associated with the economic underclass. Meanwhile, symbols of France's real mass religion -- business -- go unchecked in French schools:

"Isn't business the real mass religion? Compared to which Muslims look like an ascetic minority? Isn't the conspicuous symbol of this degrading religion what we can read on pants, sneakers and t-shirts: Nike, Chevignon, Lacoste... Isn't it cheaper yet to be a fashion victim at school than God's faithful servant? If I were to aim at hitting a bull's eye here -- aiming big -- I'd say everyone knows what's needed: a law against brand names. Get to work, Chirac. Let's ban the conspicuous symbols of Capital, with no compromises."

In a great lecture reprinted in the New York Review of Books, Tony Judt asks What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy? "We appear to have lost the capacity to question the present, much less offer alternatives to it," Judt says. "Why is it so beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage?"

The short answer: we are afraid of difference, and reluctant even to try to imagine it. As Badiou puts it in his Hard Talk interview: "We have no great and clear idea of another world."

Comments

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

What I find so absurd about the minaret ban is that there's nothing even remotely like an argument for it, and yet it still happened. Say what you want about the (lack of) gay rights in America, but at least there's a twisted, bigoted logic behind it (granting rights to gays means we approve of the gays which means we approve of gay sex which means we approve of our children becoming gays and having gay sex which means we approve of the human race dying out due to everyone being gay and only having gay sex ... or whatever). The minaret thing is just absurd on its face, a complete non sequitur. "There are fundamentalist Muslims in the world, so let's fucking ban minarets!"

[(Anonymous)]

It’s simple, really. Both the burka and the minaret bans are attempts at getting rid of Muslims through the sheer power of legislation. If we ban Muslim customs, then we kick the Muslims out of our countries. Or at least force them to give up their infidel ways.

Apparently they don’t realize that this is EXACTLY the same rationale behind Sharia states. Yay Nietzsche, here are we becoming the monsters.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Don't the richest 4% of the Swiss also have minarets on the side of their castles? They're called turret-towers, but they're the same shape.

Dubai should ban the cuckoo clock

[(Anonymous)]

It's a fair swap.

Term for a left-to-right contrarianism

[(Anonymous)]

It's a little off topic but it fits in with the ongoing general discussion of Click Opera.
I was wondering if there was some handy term (or if you've coined one) for when a person is so entrenched in contrarianism that they'll, despite considering themselves liberal, find themselves supporting a blatantly conservative/reactionary/right wing viewpoint just because it goes against the general consensus.

I'm talking less about turning against Muslims under the banner of feminism and more about the recent climate change "debate". Where because the realities of global climate change due to human causes has been hammered home with such force you see otherwise sensible people reacting against it, seemingly as a defensive maneuver. Despite the fact that less than a decade ago the consensus was that there was nothing to worry about and man had nothing to do with any of it.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Just wondering if there's a word for that.

Re: Term for a left-to-right contrarianism

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't know if there's a word for it, but it's a bit like the paradoxes that either (according to taste) entertain or bore us silly with slippage, like: "The most shocking thing a contemporary artist could do now is paint a watercolour" or "Cage's non-intentional composition is itself a form of intention" or "I'm so liberal I'm supportive of people who'd probably have me shot" or "Property is theft".

What these statements all have in common is that they regress endlessly when examined closely, and therefore signify not so much "contrariness" or "hypocrisy" or whatever, more the inherent pointlessness of defining things as their opposites.

Re: Term for a left-to-right contrarianism

[(Anonymous)]

Good point. I guess it's a problem with binaries more than anything else.

Out of the two issues, I must say that I find the carefully orchestrated attack on the Copenhagen climate summit much more alarming than the minaret ban - although in both cases you see conservatives and supposed free-thinking liberals flocking under the same banner to push away an idea that frightens them. The minaret ban is more of a class issue though - the working class seems just as willing to reject the idea of climate change as the rest.

Re: Term for a left-to-right contrarianism

[(Anonymous)]

Christ, I talk about binaries and then open a sentence up with "Out of the two issues" and compare and contrast two unrelated issues. Sorry about that.

Re: Term for a left-to-right contrarianism

[bugpowered.livejournal.com]

"I'm so liberal I'm supportive of people who'd probably have me shot"

You mean like supporting muslims in Europe?

Re: Term for a left-to-right contrarianism

[(Anonymous)]

Muslims go around shooting people?

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

I disagree... US's stance on 'gay' is just as illogical.
And its also, I think, based on religion or bolstered by, at least... which is pathetic seeing that we are supposed to have separation between church and state... (which we dont)

I've never heard an argument thats even slightly intelligent argument.
The argument you stated above didnt really make sense either... and I dont think thats the line of logic they are using or thinking.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

It's stupid, wrong, and bigoted, but it's not what I would call "illogical." If you believe that it's the government's place to legislate morality beyond a certain threshold, then the anti-gay marriage position, for example, would seem to make logical sense. In other words, the "problem" (in the eyes of the homophobes) and their "solution" to that problem seem to meet up in logical fashion. This doesn't mean their "solution" is good, right, justifiable, or whatever else. It merely means that, given their worldview, the solution seems to follow logically.

On the other hand, you have this minaret ban. It would seem to me that, if we believed the underlying argument of the anti-minaret people--that it is the government's role to limit or prevent the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, and that it can curtail religious expression toward that end--it would make more sense for them to just call for an all-out ban on mosques. Banning the minaret as a "solution" to this problem doesn't really possess any logical connection, since banning minarets doesn't do anything to curb the atmosphere that would supposedly foster Islamic fundamentalism. In that sense, it's illogical.

[(Anonymous)]

not so fast; it's illogical because it goes against the basic foundation of american law--that is, equal protection under the law. if you "ban" an adult's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (much less the sovereignty over their own sexuality) you are essentially casting them as second-class citizens.

it didn't stand in the case of women's rights and in the case of civil rights, and it won't stand in the case of the rights of gays and lesbians to be considered equal citizens under the laws of the US--which is, of course, yet another issue of civil rights.

the argument of legislating safety and morality has been used over and over again in US history, and has failed.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

It doesn't comport with many of what we call our "foundational" values, but I don't think that makes it illogical. If you're looking for an even bigger contradiction, what about the one that allows us to counteract our supposedly foundational belief in civil rights via referendum? That's what happened in California. And yet I wouldn't call the actions of the prop 8 people "illogical." Because the solution they propose--legislating marriage as between a man and a woman--follows logically from their premise--that homosexuality is not a moral example that should be supported by the state. Incredibly bigoted and homophobic, and an assault on civil rights, but standing back, one can see the logic. On the other hand, banning the minaret--by all accounts a petty, arbitrary act of fear and hate--doesn't actually work to "solve" the problem that is supposedly its premise, the incursion of Islamic fundamentalism into Swiss values, or whatever the right-wing lunatics over there think is happening. It's the equivalent of England saying that, because the IRA exists, Guinness will no longer be sold within its borders. There's no logic to it.

[(Anonymous)]

perfect you bring up CA's prop 8. it's likely that it will be found to be unconstitutional and thus must be thrown out; again, we must have equal protection under the law and if states choose to vote for things which undermine that, it will be appealed.

it's like a state voting now to have slavery; it won't hold up in washington.

[magick-temple.livejournal.com]

I see what you are saying and agree.

A parallel in the form of homophobic legislation would be for a government to in principle support the right of an individual homosexuality, but ban buttplugs as a symbol of that sexuality.

RE: an buttplugs as a symbol of that sexuality.

[(Anonymous)]

My heterosexual girlfriend loves buttplugs - she sticks them in her ears all the time when I start talking politics (she has very large ears - she is half gnome and I discriminate against her because of it constantly, gnommy bastard that she is)

Re: an buttplugs as a symbol of that sexuality.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah man, gnomes are the worst... we should ban fishing rods

[milky-eyes.livejournal.com]

thanks... i get your point....


although the stupidity behind gay issues in US would make it hard for me to call them as logical...

the argument against the minarets...

[(Anonymous)]

...was sold as a gesture with which you could express a lack of willingness to "condone" other "Islamic" practices such as female genital mutilation. If you read the vox pops in the Swiss papers this is what they say. They say they want to protect women from excessively patriarchal religions.

Of course it's nonsense, but it's no more nonsensical than what the american fundies say about gay marriage eroding the family.

Re: the argument against the minarets...

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

But in terms of actually doing anything to stem the growth of "patriarchal religions" it does nothing. The mosques can still be built, and from what I understand, there are actually very few minarets on Swiss mosques to begin with. On the other hand, banning gay marriage does something very concrete about preventing the "erosion of the family," by making it that much more difficult for homosexuals to create actual families. That's the essential difference here. It's far, far more nonsensical than the situation with gay rights in America. Again, it would be like England banning Guinness in order to stymie the IRA, or America banning the rainbow color configuration in order to lay waste to homosexuals. The connection between the supposed "problem" and the "solution" is nonexistent.

Re: the argument against the minarets...

[(Anonymous)]

hahaha. the argument of banning gay marriage to "prevent the erosion of the family" is a howler; the facts show that straight people have done a great job of that already, with over a 50 percent divorce rate amongst them.

not to mention the intellectual tyranny inherent in the premise itself, of claiming to speak for everyone as to what constitutes a "family" in the first place.