Switzerland Minarets Laws

[LAz]

IMO, the biggest threat in the west is not islam or muslims, it's relapsing back into a time when people were really ignorant.

I do not think that they are such a huge threat, but I nonetheless they are one for these nation states.





If 5 million Arabs moved to Norway it just won't be Norway no more. OMG does this make me racist?!

 

[toraerach]

Nowhere in Europe, with perhaps the exception of Albania, was Islam a welcome thing. It was pretty much flushed out, thank god. Now we see a new process, to reconquer europe in slower paces.

Indigenous Muslims make up a good chunk of the population in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sandžak, Kosovo, the Preševo valley, and parts of Bulgaria, Ukraine (although most Crimean Tatars remain displaced), Russia, Greece, and many other places. To say the Ottoman Empire was responsible for this is akin to saying the Roman Empire is responsible for France being mainly Christian.

Lets face the facts... these muslims in switzerlands are immigrants, who are of a foreign ethnic group to switzerland. The swiss naturally are not happy to see these foreign objects pop up around them. In a similar way, people are disgusted with this all over europe. [/QUOTES]

Immigrants as "foreign objects" - well thanks for making your bias clear at least.

We fought islam in the past. We died because it repressed us. We suffered under the moorish and turkish blades. We do not accept your "liberalism or multiculturalism". Our states there are for the most part nation states - not multicultural states like USA and Canada. We do not want our landscapes changed.

"We" did not do anything. As a community, Urban Toronto is comprised of many people subscribing to many faiths (or none at all) with family origins all over the planet. Even if this was a WASPs-only club, I sincerely doubt anyone here is old enough to have fought in the Crusades, the Reconquista, etc. If you want to sign up to fight in some illusory eternal culture war crap, go right ahead, but don't include me.

What did the turks leave the balkans with? The left the balkans with an insane mess. The iberian peninsula was smarter - they whiped the slate clean from the foreign invasion.

To blame the decades (even centuries) of conflict in the Balkans on the Ottoman Empire is simplistic at best. You'd have as much luck blaming the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the East-West schism, or the ideology of nationalism for the atrocities that happened there.

As for the Iberian penninsula, I really hope your just trolling and don't actually believe what you're saying. Was the expulsion of Jews as justified as the expulsion of Muslims? If not, why not? Judaism is just as foreign to Europe as Islam (i.e. not at all).

But no, I suppose you celebrate the Turkish take over of Constantinople and the consequent slow genocide on the orthodox christians there. When the Muslims are ready to return the Haga Sofia Church to us, only then should we even discuss the construction of a single mosque of theirs.

What genocide? When the Turks took Constantinople, they let many Orthodox Christians stay, and allowed others who fled to return. Sure they made them pay a special tax, but for the 15th Century, that's positively progressive. They even let the Jews fleeing from newly Christianized Iberia to settle in their empire/city. If you're talking about the horrendous population transfer that occured between Turkey and Greece after the First World War, I think you'll find there were atrocities committed on both sides, and those committed against ethnic Greeks in Turkey were motivated more by nationalism than by religion.

As for a return of Istanbul to Christendom, why not take this further? Why not demand the citizens of New York to start speaking Dutch? Why not demand Uppsala return to Norse paganism? Because the demographics of a city 300, 500, or 1000 years ago no longer matter. Things change, cities change, cultures change, and pretending they're static is not only misguided but dangerous.

It means close to nothing to be Canadian. In Europe it's different. Hence most European people do not want mosques spreading. Banning minarets is just a way to stop their construction... a mosque is not a mosque without one. Switzerland is just step one. Wait until you see other countries pass this. Of course, politicians under the influence of billions of dollars from big business and saudi money would protest such moves and do what they can to oppose the popular voice of the people.

First of all, as far as I can tell from your other posts, you don't even live in Canada. Don't come in here and tell us our identity means nothing just because we're not all a bunch of Muslim-hating xenophobic nutjobs. As for Europe, if they're cultural identity can be undermined by something as inconsequential as a little tower on a house of worship, I would suggest that their trouble goes far beyond a minority religious group.

Take us back 80 years and you might as well be quoting from the "Protocals of the Elders of Zion" as proof of foreign invasion and subversion of Christian Europe.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

If 5 million Arabs moved to Norway it just won't be Norway no more. OMG does this make me racist?!

this kinda talk makes me believe that this is starting to become more than just opposition to a religious belief or minarets.

 

[LAz]

Indigenous Muslims make up a good chunk of the population in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sandžak, Kosovo, the Preševo valley, and parts of Bulgaria, Ukraine (although most Crimean Tatars remain displaced), Russia, Greece, and many other places. To say the Ottoman Empire was responsible for this is akin to saying the Roman Empire is responsible for France being mainly Christian.

1) There are no widespread big significant muslim groups in Greece.

2) Ukraine, also, no significant muslim groups.

3) Bulgaria - the Bulgarians forced the Turks to go back to Turkey in the 1990s, no? They should have done that back in the 1910s, when most Turks in the Balkans were thrown back to where they came from.

4) Russia is not european in my opinion. Nor ukraine.

5) You should look at the demographics of bosnia and sandjzak. The Bosniak muslims there are all converts. On top of that, they were not the majority or even close to being the majority in Bosnia or Sandjzak. It's mainly after ww2 that their populations increased over the christian populationis.

6) Albanians should be grouped together, not separate as you do. In Albania proper they are mainly secular. In Yugoslavia - where we shall group your regions of presovo, kosovo and parto f macedonia - they boomd. With ten kids er so their birth-rate outnumbered the slavic birth rate by several times. Heck, just look at the result, a cultural genocidei n Kosovo with dozens and dozens of orthodox churches raised to the ground.

The middle east funded the construction of thousands of mosques in yugoslavia between 1945 and 1991. It brought about horrid results.

Immigrants as "foreign objects" - well thanks for making your bias clear at least.

It is so in switzerland. Immigrants of all sorts are not welcome. Not even after 10 years there. The swiss are very protective. You wanna be swiss- you gotta empty yourself of your heritage. They preserve their country.

"We" did not do anything. As a community, Urban Toronto is comprised of many people subscribing to many faiths (or none at all) with family origins all over the planet. Even if this was a WASPs-only club, I sincerely doubt anyone here is old enough to have fought in the Crusades, the Reconquista, etc. If you want to sign up to fight in some illusory eternal culture war crap, go right ahead, but don't include me.

I was not talking about people in Toronto. I was talking about people in Europe. They are disgusted at the thought of mosques popping up on every corner. That's why these democratic referendums block the construction of these middle eastern cultural landmarks.

To blame the decades (even centuries) of conflict in the Balkans on the Ottoman Empire is simplistic at best. You'd have as much luck blaming the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the East-West schism, or the ideology of nationalism for the atrocities that happened there.

As for the Iberian penninsula, I really hope your just trolling and don't actually believe what you're saying. Was the expulsion of Jews as justified as the expulsion of Muslims? If not, why not? Judaism is just as foreign to Europe as Islam (i.e. not at all).

It is not at all simplistic. The east-west schism could have been dealth with easily - serbs and croats do not historically not get along. In fact in the 1930s they planned a division of Yugoslavia that would separate the two peacefully. Muslims got pissed off when they saw that they would be a small minority in both what would be serbia and what would be croatia. Pitty it was not liek that. Instead Tito allowed a Bosniak nationality to emerge. Beware, the converts of your own kin are dangerous- because they start identifying with the occupier.

No comment on judaism in europe. At least it does not spread like Islam. And at least the jews assimilate pretty well. Face the fact that Islam is a religion mainly practiced by non-white people. Thus it is going to be very difficult to put it into Europe where it is considered foreign. Especially in places that have had pretty much zero islam until recent times. Maybe you would like seeing Toronto as Torontoistan. That's up to you and the people in Toronto. But people in Europe do not want their christian countries to become islamified.

What genocide? When the Turks took Constantinople, they let many Orthodox Christians stay, and allowed others who fled to return.

What genocide? Jee, the center of orthodox christianity with so many orthodox christians is today an islamic center with barely any christians. Nice. Nice. This is what is going to happen to Europe.

Sarajevo was a mainly Christian city. No more. Nope. It's a pattern.

As for a return of Istanbul to Christendom, why not take this further?

I did not say that. I simply asked for the haga sofia to be returned to the orthodox christians. That was our big church. The muslims took our church and made it into a mosque. There's nothing more horrid than a church that has been converted into a mosque.

First of all, as far as I can tell from your other posts, you don't even live in Canada. Don't come in here and tell us our identity means nothing just because we're not all a bunch of Muslim-hating xenophobic nutjobs.

Let me reword what I say.
Being canadian or american does not mean as much as being european. The countries canada and usa are much newer than the european countries. As a result they have a weaker cultural and national identity. What does it mean to be canadian? What does it mean to be american? Well, that is an endless argument, because it does not mean a whole heck of a lot. These are nations of immigrants, melting pots or soups, they are identities that are built up of other identities, not having their own identities.

In Europe on the other hand we have nation states. What do you not understand about this? When almost everyone in the state is of one nationality, then its known what the country is. Therefore identity is much mroe vivid and clear than here in north america where it is not clear and quite ambiguous.

As for Europe, if they're cultural identity can be undermined by something as inconsequential as a little tower on a house of worship, I would suggest that their trouble goes far beyond a minority religious group.

They want a little tower? Okay.
But thati s nto enough. They want more. They want more and more and more and more. It does not stop.

In a place like Finland where there was no such history of towers, this becomes problematic. It's foreign. Keep the country as it is.

If they want to build countless towers, we should be able to build countless churches there. And our priests should be allowed to holler for people to come to prayer. Face it, islam just does not fit in europe. Only in the balkans has it grasped a little bit of ground, thanks only to the fact that the region was occupied by a tyranical bastard known as ottoman turkey. The turks goal was to islamify their possessions.

 

[LAz]

this kinda talk makes me believe that this is starting to become more than just opposition to a religious belief or minarets.

I am not opposed to religious beleif. I am opposed to a changing landscape.




edit:

And for the record, Islam is much more than a religion. It is a way of life, a political system. Good ol' mohamed knew what he was getting into. Any attempts to create secular islam always fail in the long-run. Turkey for example was supposedly secular, but it has been undergoing Islamification from within. Same with the Bosniaks in Bosnia - once a not so religious small minority, getting to be the biggest group in the country (though stilla minority), and then step three is the strengthening of islam there. Their glorified leader openly said that islam is superior to christianity and socialism. It was both a political and cultural statement to the christians and supports in the entire Yugoslavia. Bastard got his wish, destroyed the country and strengthened islam in the region at the expense of thousands of lives. Islam is strict, it will die for its rights if given thsoe rights. And bloody well any religion or group should do the same. They have the right to.

That's why it is would be a catastrophe to see 5 millions arabs, greeks, spanish, chinese, or irish move to Finland.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

I am not opposed to religious beleif. I am opposed to a changing landscape.

by the sound of your previous quote, it kind a sound a bit more than just landscape:

If 5 million Arabs moved to Norway it just won't be Norway no more.

it kinda sounds like you're opposed to arabs.

 

[LAz]

I added some stuff to my previous post through the edit.

It's not just arabs. I would be very troubled to see 5 million Bulgarians descend and settle in Norway too.



I don't descriminate against a certain group in my views.

I strongly condemn what western religious sects are doing - in their words trying to civilize the savages in the third world by sendind their missionaries out to convert them. Makes me sick! But no, they want to spread their religion.

Greece was the smarthest. They banned Proselytism. Fucken genious!!!!
It was not the muslims who were complaining for the violation of human rights. It was the western religious sect nuts.



So no I am not against only one group.

 

[ssk]

IMO, the biggest threat in the west is not islam or muslims, it's relapsing back into a time when people were really ignorant.

Ignorance eh? Check this out: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2401093/posts?q=1&;page=1

 

[toraerach]

1) There are no widespread big significant muslim groups in Greece.

Well they're not significant anymore. Most were expelled during the population transfers in 1923. Muslim (ethnic) Turks were only allowed to stay in Western Thrace. Christian (ethnic) Greeks were only allowed to stay in parts of Turkish Thrace and Constantinople/Istanbul. They're both a small minority now, but in both cases these communities are made up of people who were born in their country of residence, as were their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents - as native to their lands as the Quebecois.

2) Ukraine, also, no significant muslim groups.

Again, not significant anymore. The Crimean Tatar population was expelled from their homeland by Stalin as collective punishment for collaborating with Nazi occupiers. Those who have returned to Crimea have as much claim to the land as their Russian and Ukrainian neighbours.

3) Bulgaria - the Bulgarians forced the Turks to go back to Turkey in the 1990s, no? They should have done that back in the 1910s, when most Turks in the Balkans were thrown back to where they came from.

No, they did not deport the entire (ethnic) Turkish population to Turkey. For years there was pressure from the government on Turks to get out, but many remain. And a Turk who was born in Sofia, whose parents were born in Sofia, whose grandparents were born in Sofia, etc. is from Sofia - pretending he's some Anatolian transplant that should go back were he came from is silliness at the least.

5) You should look at the demographics of bosnia and sandjzak. The Bosniak muslims there are all converts. On top of that, they were not the majority or even close to being the majority in Bosnia or Sandjzak. It's mainly after ww2 that their populations increased over the christian populationis.

They might have been converts a couple centuries ago, but today most of them are born in the faith. Are Italians converts to Catholicism cause somewhere in their family tree way way back someone worshipped at the altar of Jupiter? Of course not. And them being the majority is not my point. My point is that they're there, in Europe, and they're Muslims - not immigrants but just as indigenous to the land as their Christian neighbours.

6) Albanians should be grouped together, not separate as you do. In Albania proper they are mainly secular. In Yugoslavia - where we shall group your regions of presovo, kosovo and parto f macedonia - they boomd. With ten kids er so their birth-rate outnumbered the slavic birth rate by several times. Heck, just look at the result, a cultural genocidei n Kosovo with dozens and dozens of orthodox churches raised to the ground.

I was separating Europe into geographical regions. Albanians live in many regions under many governments. It doesn't matter to me if they had a higher birthrate than their Christian neighbours in the past. They're there now. There's been ethnic cleansing on all sides during the breakup of Yugoslavia, and mosques have made just as good targets as churches to fanatical nationalists. Does that excuse the destruction of churches in Kosovo? No, but let's not pretend Muslims/Islam caused that whole atrocious chapter in human history.

It is so in switzerland. Immigrants of all sorts are not welcome. Not even after 10 years there. The swiss are very protective. You wanna be swiss- you gotta empty yourself of your heritage. They preserve their country.

If they're not welcomed there, they shouldn't let them in to begin with. At least then they'd be upfront about it instead of waging some stupid war on an unthreatening symbol.

I was not talking about people in Toronto. I was talking about people in Europe. They are disgusted at the thought of mosques popping up on every corner. That's why these democratic referendums block the construction of these middle eastern cultural landmarks.

People are people everywhere. If we're going to condemn xenophobia and religious intolerance here, we should not and cannot excuse them in Europe, the Middle East, Fiji, Sri Lanka, or Lesotho.

It is not at all simplistic. The east-west schism could have been dealth with easily - serbs and croats do not historically not get along. In fact in the 1930s they planned a division of Yugoslavia that would separate the two peacefully. Muslims got pissed off when they saw that they would be a small minority in both what would be serbia and what would be croatia. Pitty it was not liek that. Instead Tito allowed a Bosniak nationality to emerge. Beware, the converts of your own kin are dangerous- because they start identifying with the occupier.

I know it's not simplistic. You were originally the one who said it was all the Turks fault, not me. I gave you an incomplete list of the many, many factors that shaped the Yugoslav conflicts. But of course, all you can see is this Muslim-as-invader nonsense. The ethnic cleansing of Serbians under Croatia's fascist regime during WWII had nothing to do with tensions between the two ethnic groups, right? It was all the Muslims' fault, right? People will find stupid reasons to kill each other when times get tough.

[

No comment on judaism in europe. At least it does not spread like Islam. And at least the jews assimilate pretty well. Face the fact that Islam is a religion mainly practiced by non-white people.

Go back less than a century and people were saying the same things about Jews as you are about Muslims. Back then it wasn't so easy for Jews to assimilate into European societies, and it was because Europeans wouldn't let them - similarities to what's going on with Muslims in Europe now, this steadfast refusal to see them as anything but foreign, is alarming and unfortunate.

Maybe you would like seeing Toronto as Torontoistan. That's up to you and the people in Toronto. But people in Europe do not want their christian countries to become islamified.

Yes, I want to see Toronto become Torontoistan, it would sure be a welcome change from this Papal State we've been living in since we let in the Irish.

What genocide? Jee, the center of orthodox christianity with so many orthodox christians is today an islamic center with barely any christians. Nice. Nice. This is what is going to happen to Europe.

Sarajevo was a mainly Christian city. No more. Nope. It's a pattern.

And Uppsala, the centre of Norse Paganism, is now the seat of the Church of Sweden - is genocide the culprit? No. I'll admit that Constantinople/Istanbul had its moments of intolerance towards its Greek/Christian community. I'll even admit that yes, some actions of the government and the local population were genocidal (the Istanbul Pogram in 1955 comes to mind). But if you think Christian Greek Constantinople became Muslim Turkish Istanbul overnight in 1453, you're mistaken. When the Turks invaded Constantinople, it was already a hollowed out shell of its former glory. Those Greeks who did not flee were largely allowed to stay, and many of those who did flee were allowed to return. The city grew as the Ottoman capital and attracted many Turkish settlers. Their population outgrew the Greek population. Many churches were converted into mosques, but some churches remained. Life was not ideal for these Greeks, but it was a lot better to be a Greek in Istanbul than a Morisco in Andalucia.

The city changed, the demographics shifted and not necessarily because of genocide. Sarajevo became predominantly Muslim when many residents converted to Islam under Ottoman rule (Manila became predominantly Catholic under Spanish rule too, etc.).

I did not say that. I simply asked for the haga sofia to be returned to the orthodox christians. That was our big church. The muslims took our church and made it into a mosque. There's nothing more horrid than a church that has been converted into a mosque.

Hagia Sophia is no longer a mosque, but a public museum. I don't think you can expect any better when it comes to a building that is held dearly by two religions and two communities.

 

[toraerach]

In Europe on the other hand we have nation states. What do you not understand about this? When almost everyone in the state is of one nationality, then its known what the country is. Therefore identity is much mroe vivid and clear than here in north america where it is not clear and quite ambiguous.

The nation state is a lie. No country in Europe is populated solely by one native nation (except for Iceland). The nation state was a myth created in the 19th Century. What good has it ever done? Not much unless you're a fan of genocide, population transfers, ethnic cleansing, etc. I don't understand why people still subscribe to this outdated belief. If Europeans still cling to the nation state, perhaps they deserve to have their identities shattered as they cannot live with the benefits of globalization without living in a global world. If your identity necessitates looking at people first and foremost as a member of an ethnic group, a religion, wherever their distant ancestors came from centuries ago, or whatever crap their ancestors did to your ancestors, I really wouldn't mind if your identity got ripped apart. Seriously, it's holding us back from ever looking at each other as human beings all equally deserving of respect.

It's foreign. Keep the country as it is.

From your posts in this thread and in the gentrification thread you started away back when, I'm getting the impression that you're not a big fan of change at all - countries should stay the same, people should stay the same, and neighbourhood should stay the same. Unfortunately, we live in a world (and always have, even back in 1453) of constant change. People have been moving around and intermixing forever. Pretending this doesn't happen or making silly judgments like, for example, "minarets in Switzerland are bad change, Internet access in Switzerland is good change," is unfortunate and misguided.

 

[ssk]

Edit: D'oh, already said by ^.

Being canadian or american does not mean as much as being european. The countries canada and usa are much newer than the european countries. As a result they have a weaker cultural and national identity. What does it mean to be canadian? What does it mean to be american? Well, that is an endless argument, because it does not mean a whole heck of a lot. These are nations of immigrants, melting pots or soups, they are identities that are built up of other identities, not having their own identities.

In Europe on the other hand we have nation states. What do you not understand about this? When almost everyone in the state is of one nationality, then its known what the country is. Therefore identity is much mroe vivid and clear than here in north america where it is not clear and quite ambiguous.

The nation state is a fairly new concept, and as such, all nation states are equally artificial. It's absolutely ridiculous to say that people from Geneva and Basel are the same, that people from Brittany, Paris, Marseille and Lille are the same, that people from Catania, Cagliari, Bari, Milan and Genoa are the same.

The majority of people in North America might be fairly new, but they didn't all appear out of nowhere. They all have history, just like all the people that migrated all over Europe. I'll end with a poem:

From The True-Born Englishman, by Daniel Defoe:

Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That heterogeneous thing an Englishman;
In eager rapes and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Briton and a Scot;
Whose gendering offspring quickly learned to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough;
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name nor nation, speech nor fame;
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infused betwixt a Saxon and a Dane;
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Received all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted brood of Englishmen.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

Ignorance eh? Check this out: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2401093/posts?q=1&;page=1

i'll raise ya...

http://www.conservapedia.com/

 

[GenerationW]

What genocide? When the Turks took Constantinople, they let many Orthodox Christians stay, and allowed others who fled to return. Sure they made them pay a special tax, but for the 15th Century, that's positively progressive. They even let the Jews fleeing from newly Christianized Iberia to settle in their empire/city. If you're talking about the horrendous population transfer that occured between Turkey and Greece after the First World War, I think you'll find there were atrocities committed on both sides, and those committed against ethnic Greeks in Turkey were motivated more by nationalism than by religion.

The Greeks and Turks were motivated by nationalism and religion simply because both were so intertwined in that part of the world.

In the long-term, the population transfer actually was successful considering the numbers involved (Bulgaria also exchanged populations with Greece and Turkey). The biggest failure was on Turkey's part. The Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations of 1923 specified that a number of Muslims were allowed to remain in Greek Thrace and an equal number of Christians could stay in Constantinople/Istanbul. Today there are approx. 150,000 Muslims in that part of Greece but only 5,000 Greeks remain in Turkey, thanks primarily to Turkey's 1955 pogrom and its aftereffects.

 

[GenerationW]

3) Bulgaria - the Bulgarians forced the Turks to go back to Turkey in the 1990s, no? They should have done that back in the 1910s, when most Turks in the Balkans were thrown back to where they came from.

Something like 300,000 left/were expelled but some later came back, and today Turks make up about 9% of Bulgaria's population.

I simply asked for the haga sofia to be returned to the orthodox christians. That was our big church. The muslims took our church and made it into a mosque. There's nothing more horrid than a church that has been converted into a mosque.

I believe it's now a museum.

 

[GenerationW]

The nation state is a lie. No country in Europe is populated solely by one native nation (except for Iceland). The nation state was a myth created in the 19th Century. What good has it ever done? Not much unless you're a fan of genocide, population transfers, ethnic cleansing, etc. I don't understand why people still subscribe to this outdated belief. If Europeans still cling to the nation state, perhaps they deserve to have their identities shattered as they cannot live with the benefits of globalization without living in a global world. If your identity necessitates looking at people first and foremost as a member of an ethnic group, a religion, wherever their distant ancestors came from centuries ago, or whatever crap their ancestors did to your ancestors, I really wouldn't mind if your identity got ripped apart. Seriously, it's holding us back from ever looking at each other as human beings all equally deserving of respect.

You're a bit late. The nation state train has left the station.

And never mind that they killed each other a plenty before there were nation states, and would do the same under the right circumstances should nation states disappear.