Switzerland's Stand

So, it's come to that. The surface neutralization of the appearance of a Muslim minority representing 6% of the population in Switzerland. Symbolic, the move, nothing but. Putting that 6% of the population on notice. They are there, on sufferance. The majority have their suspicions. They resent the dilution of their society, their traditions, their values.

Formerly immigrants have seen it in their best interests to absorb themselves into the general social community. On the other hand, immigrants have always sought solace and reassurance in the familiarity of enclaves of their own. Which needn't have led to total parochialism and separation from the majority society. And, in some countries, to a sense of unacceptable entitlement.

Where, for example, in England, Muslim clerics clamored for Sharia law. A parallel system of law meant to settle strictly-Muslim problems under the letter of Islamic interpretations of a law specific to Muslims. And where many of those same clerics openly agitate for the eventual Islamification of the entirety of Great Britain, a most tolerant country, up until now. That tolerance slipped a notch with the reality of home-grown jihadi cells.

There are estimated to exist 130 to 160 Islamic cultural and prayer centres in Switzerland. Of those, four mosques bear minarets. Traditionally, in Muslim countries, the call to prayer has issued from minarets. In Switzerland that tradition has been banned. The tradition of a muezzin or a recording being played loudly at prayer times throughout the day and night even in majority-Muslim countries has been altered. In non-Muslim-majority countries they are considered a social irritant.

The Swiss, under the encouragement of their right-wing Swiss People's Party, have expressed the level of their discontent, their disgruntlement, their disfavour of the presence of a sizeable minority of immigrants whose customs and traditions may have seemed tolerably quaint originally, but now seem irritatingly intrusive and abusive of their own traditions by voting out the symbolic presence of what they term Muslim visual militancy. They have, as a result, voted what amounts to an insulting slap at Swiss Muslims; no minarets.

A perceived blow that has had the result of reflecting Swiss fears onto their Swiss Muslim population. Who feel insulted, discouraged and humiliated. As only second-class citizens can be made to feel. And if anyone looks for which of the cultures should be blamed, they will have a hard time doing it. People have an ingrained tendency to wish to protect what they value, and what could be more valuable to any society than its national mores, traditions, culture and values.

When a steady infiltration of what amounts to a foreign element has lost its appeal as uniquely harmless and becomes threatening, transforming of the norm, resistance rears its head. This is human nature. East is east and West is west and they mix like oil and water, despite our most resolute intentions otherwise. The truth is there must be a sense of received trust that the 'other' will accommodate himself to the reality of the majority.

In a country like Israel, there is a move before the Knesset to outlaw the 4 .a.m. call to prayer as an irritant to non-Muslims, as it "wreaks havoc in Jerusalem", and in other towns and cities in the country where Muslims reside. It is pointed out that this does not occur in Turkey and Egypt as well as other majority-Muslim countries where a "silent radio station awakens" Muslims every day with a call to prayer.

Muslims are not totally innocent in the fomenting of suspicion and fear among a welcoming population in the West. There are many, if not most Muslim countries whose populations viscerally hate Jews; hatred for Jews is deeply entrenched in the culture, and can also be state-sanctioned. They bring this pathology with them and spread it in countries where they emigrate. Countries that celebrate their pluralism, discover that their new citizens do not.

There are fences of accommodation to be mended on both sides. But it is more stringently incumbent on people who migrate to other countries - to attain a better quality of life for themselves than what obtained in their countries of origin - to engage in introspection about the inappropriateness of some of their cultural traditions. To make themselves knowledgeable of the social mores acceptable where they now live.

And adjust themselves accordingly.

As they would be done, they must do unto others.