Minarets of Acceptance

Egypt’s Mufti has denounced a vote to ban new minarets in Switzerland on Sunday as an 'insult' to Muslims across the world. Since when have Muslims needed the minaret to validate their faith?

When Muhammad entered the city of Medina, amongst the first task that he set out to do was to construct his abode and subsequently a mosque adjacent to it. The mosque was a simple open-air building made with mud walls and palm trunks. Its most distinguishable feature was a simple platform where Muhammad taught the contents of the Quran to his followers. When the time for prayer came, Bilal Al-Habshee simply stood at a corner and recited his call to the faithful. There were no opulent domes nor were there any fancy minarets at which he stood. It was an austere structure indeed. But from this simple mosque, Muslims rose to become a formidable force in the Arabian Peninsula within the short space of Muhammad’s rule.

A mosque is primarily a space to contemplate and remember God. Beyond that, it serves as a place of learning and forging social cohesion within the community. The Arabic word for mosque, ‘masjid’, literally translates to mean a place where one prostrates oneself. But today, the mosque has grown beyond its original intention as a place of prayer and learning.

In areas where Muslim populations are a minority, the mosque now serves as a bastion to validate their existence. Grand domes and imposing minarets are looked upon proudly as conspicuous symbols that Muslims have established themselves as a tangible and permanent feature of the landscape. Despite the fact that Muhammad had once warned his followers against opulence when constructing places of worship, Muslim communities are largely not abating in building them grander and taller. A search on Google for “grand masjid” turns up about a million images of magnificent mosques all over the world, including Europe and America - when the phrase should rightly be an oxymoron.

The proposed law to ban the construction of minarets may have been seen as an attempt to halt any existing Muslim ambition in building similar grand mosques on Swiss soil. But the referendum signals a deeper anxiety towards Muslim in general. As Farhad Afshar, who runs the Coordination of Islamic Organizations in Switzerland said, “Most painful for us is not the minaret ban, but the symbol sent by this vote”. He added that “Muslims do not feel accepted as a religious community” in Switzerland.

It seems that we have forgotten that Muslims were never accepted as a religious community during the days when the very first verse of the Quran was revealed. Muhammad and his family tolerated persecution for years under the pagan tribes of Mecca when he began preaching the values of Islam. Muhammad did not gain converts through asserting their right to practice, nor did they have the impulsive need to be accepted as a religious community. All Muhammad and the Muslims did was to demonstrate the values of Islam by exemplifying themselves according to the values of the Quran, all from a humble, minaret-less mosque.

Perhaps Muslims should use the federal ban on minarets to reflect upon themselves on why the referendum was overwhelmingly approved in the Switzerland canton despite the country having a reputation as a refuge for tolerance. Has anti-Islam anxiety reached a point where lawmakers are left with no choice but to accept a grotesquely discriminatory proposal? Was the referendum done in retaliation against Muslims resistance towards integration? Had Muslims in Europe lived the life of Muhammad, who exemplified tolerance and acceptance towards people of all religions, would the “native occident” be less derogatory towards them?

There are presently 150 mosques in Switzerland, only 2 of which have minarets. The referendum only seeks to ban the construction of minarets, not the construction of mosques and Muslims are still free to practise their faith. The minaret, originally intended as a spire to spread the call to prayer, has largely lost its function with the advent of more efficient broadcasting technologies. Muslims have to stop clamouring on to outmoded symbols such as the minaret to validate the existence of their faith.

The worse thing Muslims can do now is to over react to this ban in the style of the Danish cartoon protests. This will only seal the perception that Europeans have towards Muslims as intolerable bigots who will scream with a placard at any given opportunity.

The writer is a student enrolled in the Bachelor of Islamic Revealed Knowledge at the International Islamic University & doing the Master of Science (Strategic Studies) at the Nanyang Technological University