Baptist Joint Committee Executive Director J. Brent Walker is a panelist for The Washington Post/ Newsweek online conversation, "On Faith." Each week panelists have the opportunity to answer a question posed by Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn, the moderators of the site.
This week's question was this: What's your reaction to Sunday's decision by voters in Switzerland to ban construction of minarets, the slender towers from which Muslims are called to daily prayers?
Walker's response follows:
Referendum strikes at the heart of Islam
The Swiss referendum is a cheap shot at Islam, a wholesale attack on religious liberty and a stark outlier for the usually irenic and tolerant Swiss.
This measure is not a carefully crafted law that seeks to prevent religiously inspired conduct of Muslims that would harm others, or even society at large. This is a brazen broadside that strikes at the very heart of Islam (or any religion): the architecture of the house of worship and, therefore, worship itself.
While reasonable people will disagree about the extent to which government has the authority to police harmful religious behavior, one never can justify government bans on religious symbols on private property or worship style that does not directly affect third parties. This should have been an easy vote for referendum opponents to win.
The referendum has been condemned around the world. And, not just by Muslims. The Vatican criticized the result as exacerbating "the problems of cohabitation between religions and cultures." Indeed, France's Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, said he was shocked. As Don Byrd observed on the Baptist Joint Committee's "Blog from the Capital," even "the Muslim headscarf-banning France is appalled."
I'm sorry to say, I think we'll see more of this politically driven religious intolerance. Inspired by ethnocentrism and ignorance, we fear what is different from us and what we don't understand; what we fear we instinctively lash out against.
Islamist violence is unacceptable, and should be resisted in every country. Peaceful practice of Islam should be welcomed in a progressive democratic society – not the least Switzerland of all places.
