THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume IX, Issue # 211, November 11, 2007
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
POLITICAL ISLAM GETS SWITZERLAND'S GOAT
By R. John Matthies
SWISS NATIONALISM & POPULISM: SWISS POLITICS, THE ISLAMIST THREAT, & THE RISE OF THE SWISS PEOPLE'S
PARTY -- CONCERNS ABOUT THE INROADS OF POLITICAL ISLAM IN SWITZERLAND AROUSE THE COHESIVE FORCE OF
SWISS NATIONAL IDENTITY, CULTURE, & LOYALTY -- THE NATIONALIST & POPULIST SVP GAINS IN POLITICAL STRENGTH
AS IT CALLS FOR A DIRECT POPULAR VOTE TO BAN MINARETS AS SYMBOLS OF A POLITICAL & AGGRESSIVE ISLAM
DETERMINED TO IMPOSE ISLAMIC LAW ON SWISS SOCIETY & DESTROY ITS DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS
FULL STORY:
The face of European populism is, these days, white and bristly. And it answers to a comic name. Meet "Zottel," the billy
goat mascot of the Swiss People's Party (SVP). Zottel, the Party's "bleating" heart, was conscripted to enliven the October,
2007, federal elections; and, as any Swiss will tell you, Zottel's become a celebrity in his own right.
He is familiar across the nation as title character of Alois Carigiet's Zottel, Zick und Zwerg (Anton the
Goatherd), 1966 winner of the Swiss Youth Book prize. But, most important, he is the SVP's partial answer to the
question, posed by Dr. Samuel P. Huntington, of Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity.
For reasons of Zottel's folksy appeal, and as much for his party's electoral weight, critical journalists have begun to
describe Switzerland a "laboratory for populists." Belgium's Le Soir asked readers to shun the Alpine nation.
But no matter: Zottel's handlers are bounding over the 29% they earned in October's vote. This cements the Party's
position as first [largest single] political formation in the Swiss Confederation -- a distinction they first earned in 2003.
Since that time, the SVP's share of the Swiss National Council has grown to 62 seats of 200. The second-place Social
Democrats, meanwhile, dropped nine, to settle for 43.
Until two decades ago, the SVP was a lightweight agrarian formation; but, under the influence of billionaire industrialist and
Swiss Justice Minister Christoph Blocher, the Party has grown to embrace "Europhobia," a neo-liberal economic platform,
and a certain idea of "Swissness."
Critics are quick to compare Blocher to Austria's Jörg Haider, or to Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Pen. But Party leaders dismiss
talk of "Alpine Fascism"; and the SVP website (in German and in French) pains to present a nationalism consistent with
Heidi and Ricola commercial spots.
Campaign literature describes a party beholden to Switzerland, and to no other. And the Party's electoral platform invites
judges to censure practices at odds with "Swiss values." These, Party spokesmen write, include genital excision, "crimes of
honor," polygamy, and discrimination against women. The Party also speaks to freedom of conscience and opinion, while
rejecting, in the tradition of Swiss secularism, "political claims of religious inspiration and their symbols." This refers to
minarets, specifically.
The Party kicked off a signature drive in May, 2007, to force an obligatory referendum banning minarets, which Blocher's
party considers both an accessory of worship and a "sign of domination." Party spokesmen write:
"Islam makes no distinction between Church and State,
such that minarets become the expression of influence
not only religious, but political, in nature. This
conception is incompatible with Western secular
tradition."
To bolster this argument, the Party summons Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, as Mayor of Istanbul,
received a sentence of 10 months for bowdlerizing an Islamic poem. The Mayor's version, read publicly, says: "The
mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers."
The SVP literature also argues that "arguments that serve today to justify minaret construction will be used, in turn, to
justify muezzins [those who call to prayer]." This has not, so far, been cause for alarm: Switzerland counts only two
minarets today -- one in Zurich and one in Geneva -- and the call to prayer is allowed from neither. But the Party's position,
on principle, is clear: "It's high time to let the Swiss people decide on the question of minarets in their nation." And the
wind, at present, blows in the Party's favor: Earlier in the year, for example, Lausanne's Matin published results of a survey
claiming 43% of Swiss support a ban on minarets.
SVP parliamentarian Oskar Freysinger claims the Party has nothing against Muslims or the Islamic faith. "But we don't
want minarets," he stated. Freysinger continued:
"The minaret is a symbol of a political and aggressive Islam;
it's a symbol of Islamic law. The minute you have minarets in
Europe, it means Islam will have taken over."
Mr. Freysinger and his party may well be "paranoid," as critical journalists have claimed; but with the appeal of their
message and the result of October's elections, they have succeeded in demanding the famously neutral Swiss to decide
between (1) Western multiculturalism, which views the minaret as symbol of "respect, cohesion, and citizen solidarity"; or
(2) the national tradition of direct democracy, in which the people's will (however paranoid) is binding.
Will minarets one day festoon the Alpine horizon? It's for the Swiss to decide if that's a good thing -- or if, as Zottel claims,
it's ba-a-a-a-ad.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Europe, European States, Politics, & Public Policy
Europe, Europeans, & American Foreign Policy
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
United States Immigration, Assimilation, & National Security Policy:
Immigration into the U.S.A., Legal & Illegal Aliens,
& U.S. Border Control
The American Nation & Its Common National Culture:
Political Culture, Patriotism, & American National Identity:
The Basic Values, Beliefs, & Traditions Characteristic
of American Society & Its Civic Culture
R. John Matthies is Assistant Director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. He can be contacted at
matthies@meforum.org
The foregoing article by R. John Matthies was originally published in the American Thinker, November 8, 2007,
and can be found on the Internet website
maintained by the Middle East Forum, a think tank which seeks to define and
promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam, working for
Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote constitutional
democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly asserting U.S.
interests vis-ā-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
November 11, 2007
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity