Switzerland bans building of minarets

[jetsetter]

Wow. I had no idea Finalgear's Europeans were so xenophobic.

Europe in general is much more xenophobic than people usually give it credit for. It one aspect of Europe that all know but few acknowledge. The United States is pointed at because we actually have vocal discussion and don't push things under the rug as is done in other places.

 

[BlaRo]

Europe in general is much more xenophobic than people usually give it credit for. It one aspect of Europe that all know but few acknowledge. The United States is pointed at because we actually have vocal discussion and don't push things under the rug as is done in other places.

For once (or twice), I'm inclined to agree with you. Also, snazzy new avatar, sir.

 

[salle]

Well name a war that was not started over religious differences. All the big ones were. I'm not talking specifically about Islam, I'm talking religion. I'm sure you know of a man called Galileo.

OK just doing the last 100 years of conflicts not involving religion. (And skipping all the civil wars even those where other nations has intervened.)

The Second Rif War
Second Franco-Moroccan War
The Italo-Turkish War
The First World War
The Georgian-Armenian War *
The Polish?Ukrainian War *
The Polish?Czechoslovak War *
The Hungarian?Romanian War of 1919 *
The Italo-Yugoslav War *
The Polish?Soviet War *
The Greco-Turkish War *
The Third Rif War
The Polish?Lithuanian War *
The Turkish?Armenian War *
The Soviet-Georgian War
The incident at Petrich
The Sino-Soviet War of 1929
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria
The Shanghai War of 1932
The Chaco War
The Colombia-Peru War
The Saudi-Yemeni War
The Second Italo-Abyssinian War
The Second Sino-Japanese War (later part of the second world war)
The Changkufeng Incident
Hungarian Invasion of the Carpatho-Ukraine
The Slovak-Hungarian War
The Italian invasion of Albania
The Soviet-Japanese Border War (1939)
The Second World War
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1947
Operation Polo
The Korean War
The Invasion of Tibet (1950-1951)
The Suez Crisis
The Vietnam War
The Portuguese-Indian War
The Sino-Indian War
The Sand War
United States occupation of the Dominican Republic
Indo-Pakistani War of 1965
South African Border War *
The Six-Day War
War of Attrition
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
The "Football" War
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
The Yom Kippur War
The Indonesian invasion & occupation of East Timor
The Libyan?Egyptian War
The Falklands War
United States invasion of Panama
The Gulf War
The Iraqi War

* Mainly territorial disputes caused by the First World War.

Edit: What I found was that most of the disputes were about increasing territory and gain natural resources of the ones I've listed.

 

[salle]

In this case, yes. Alright, just imagine going to say, saudi arabia and trying to build a classic style christian church there and see how they react.

Wait so you're saying that we shouldn't let Muslims build temples here... because they're intolerant and won't let Christians build churches in an Islamic country? Your logic is fucked up.

 

[Firecat]

News is over a year old, and I don't know what has come from it. But hey, seems like a start

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1723715,00.html

The Vatican has confirmed that it is negotiating for permission to build the first church in Saudi Arabia.

But Saudi Arabia isn't even a democracy, and their interpretation of Islam is quite warped. There are plenty of "Muslim countries" that have churches and synagogues.

 

[nomix]

Well, just to clarify a bit, one of the things Hitler did to help inspire hatred towards the Jews was to take the Catholic church's official stance which was antisemitic (and actually remained so until the 60s).

"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the almighty creator; by defending myself against the Jews, I am fighting for the lord...I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people..."

Peter de Ros, former Jesuit priest and theologian: "In 1936..Hitler assured his lordship[Bishop Berning of Osnabruch] there was no fundamental difference between national socialism and the catholic church. Had not the church, he argued, looked on Jews as parisites and shut them in ghettos? 'I am only doing,' he boasted, 'what the church has done for fifteen hundred years, only more effectively'"

So at the very least you have to agree that religion was used as a tool or motivating factor to influence the masses. And Hitler did indeed conduct business in a sort of pseudo-religious totalitarian manner. the whole preaching of infallible doctrine thing and persecuting those who didn't agree absolutely, but thats another debate entirely

German soldiers had "Got mit uns" on their belt buckels, we can always show how religion was used to motivate the soldiers, the public and win over people who were sceptic to war and the nazi party itself.

But the second world war still was not a war of religion. If religion was not there, it would have made no difference, the war would still have come..

OK just doing the last 100 years of conflicts not involving religion. (And skipping all the civil wars even those where other nations has intervened.)

*snip*

* Mainly territorial disputes caused by the First World War.

Edit: What I found was that most of the disputes were about increasing territory and gain natural resources of the ones I've listed.

Yup. Except WW1 wasn't mainly a war about terretorial gain, it's plain and simple nationalism, for the domination of Europe (and the world).

 

[salle]

Well domination of the world I'd agree with. As far as I can remember part of it was for territorial gains in the colonies for Germany, and for a lot of the countries who were then persuaded to help out territories where offered as their reward. So yeah... still territories.

 

[nomix]

The whole thing was a result of nationalism, fundamentally. Colonies were a part of that, not because of a need for terretory, but as a sign of a nation and a people's power, influence and prestige.

But the katalyst really was the alliance system that just meant that peace fell like pieces of domino.

First Franz Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo by nationalist serbs. Then Emperor Franz-Josef of Austria-Hungary started to mobilize, and took it as a good time to annex Serbia (terretorial gain, but more about prestige than terretory per say, worth noting that Franz-Josef didn't like Franz-Ferdinand, he married without permission), this made Czar Nikolai II of Russia grumpy, as he saw himself as the "father" of all slaves (Russians, Serbs), so he mobilized, Emperor Willhelm II went to war with Russia to protect Austria-Hungary, France, allied to Russia, declared war on Germany, Germany attacked France through Belgium, which Great Britain had promised to protect, and so Britain was in war as well.

That's about it, generally speaking.

 

[tigger]

1) The minarets were not used to call for prayer. In fact, the minarets were... well, useless to the Swiss Muslims. They were only there as symbols of the Islamic faith. Correct?

Your logic is amazingly flawed. They want to build minarets. Minarets are a key aspect of mosques and a symbol of the religion. But since they don't "use" them, well shit they must not want them!

Wow. I had no idea Finalgear's Europeans were so xenophobic.

I know what you mean. I'm not mad, just disappointed. Like jetsetter said, at least we try to discuss our race problems.

can always criticize yanks for being homophobic gay-bashers. But I've never claimed that they're more xenophobic than is necessary.

Ignorance is the refuge of the shallow mind. If you find any amount of xenophobia necessary then you're no different than those homophobic gay-bashers.

 

[idk]

All that crying about tolerance and then not tolerating the decision that was made in a democratic country... yah...

I would also have voted against it. I don't like religious symbols stuck in my face.

There are so many regulations what u can build and what you can't here...

In many towns and villages you can't built your own house like u want. You can not choose the color of the tiles on your roof.

Many traditional towns won't permit any construction that doesn't fit. If anything doesn't fit in a traditional alpine village... it's a minaret.

Sorry, but thats just true.

 

[Firecat]

All that crying about tolerance and then not tolerating the decision that was made in a democratic country... yah...

So one must be tolerant of the intolerant? So in the U.S. if the public votes against Gay marriage, the decision should be respected. So all the protestors in support of Gay marriage would be considered intolerant?

In many towns and villages you can't built your own house like u want. You can not choose the color of the tiles on your roof.

Those regulations apply to everyone, not one specific group of people. Right?

 

[Karoug]

So i was watching titus, and i thought this was fitting:
[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iLpQSuKqfo[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Crazyjeeper]

All that crying about tolerance and then not tolerating the decision that was made in a democratic country... yah...

Tyranny of the majority...

 

[tigger]

All that crying about tolerance and then not tolerating the decision that was made in a democratic country... yah...

:lol: We should tolerate intolerance, is that right?

 

[LeVeL]

Your logic is amazingly flawed. They want to build minarets. Minarets are a key aspect of mosques and a symbol of the religion. But since they don't "use" them, well shit they must not want them!

You failed at reading my entire post.

 

[wooflepoof]

German soldiers had "Got mit uns" on their belt buckels, we can always show how religion was used to motivate the soldiers, the public and win over people who were sceptic to war and the nazi party itself.

But the second world war still was not a war of religion. If religion was not there, it would have made no difference, the war would still have come..



Yup. Except WW1 wasn't mainly a war about terretorial gain, it's plain and simple nationalism, for the domination of Europe (and the world).

I agree that it was not a religious war by any means, but the conviction of the people to go to war and fight with that fervor was certainly strengthened by religion and Hitlers reign itself (like many dictators') had a quasi religious framework; Hitler did in fact take inspiration from he way the church lorded itself over its followers. The case for killing Jews would have been quite a bit harder to make if the church didn't teach that the Jews were enemies of Christianity. This is something the Koran still teaches.

I'm not saying I'm intolerant of Muslims or Islam because thankfully most (of the ones I meet anyway) are more sensible than the ones that actually decide to follow all the tenets of their religion. Like Catholics who don't see homosexuality as a "moral evil" and whatever, but anyone who says Islam is an essentially peaceful religion needs to take a serious look at the teachings of its[Islam's] holy book and not just go by wikipedia or what the guy in sleeper cell says.

 

[Firecat]

but anyone who says Islam is an essentially peaceful religion needs to take a serious look at the teachings of its[Islam's] holy book and not just go by wikipedia or what the guy in sleeper cell says.

Islam, by definition, means peace. There are laws, that some may find archaic. A lot of the text that people read are often taken out of the context of history and the time in which it was revealed.

 

[Dogbert]

anyone who says Islam is an essentially peaceful religion needs to take a serious look at the teachings of its[Islam's] holy book

Well, going by that flawless logic, every religion isn't a peaceful religion.


Seriously, I'm just floored by the blatant intolerance from Europeans in this thread, especially from the Scandinavian countries. You guys are making our American nutjob conservatives look relatively sane. Good job.

 

[wooflepoof]

Well, going by that flawless logic, every religion isn't a peaceful religion.

Every Abrahamic religion you mean. Confucianism Taoism Buddhism, Shintoism, Wicca and several other religions actually DO teach peace and are more ways of life than worshipping a diety and converting/attacking unbelievers. Not all religions are evangelical in nature.

Islam, by definition, means peace. There are laws, that some may find archaic. A lot of the text that people read are often taken out of the context of history and the time in which it was revealed.

And it's quite peaceful indeed, but only within itself and to those that follow Allahs word, that doesn't apply to the infidels who, according to the Koran, must be converted or destroyed.

The Koran makes it a point to say that Allahs teachings are infallible and unchanging (same is true for the other Abrahamic religions, but one of the main points against them is that we pick and choose what is or isn't moral based on a criteria independent of the texts which are supposed to be the infallible words of God...so why not just skip the middleman and go straight for the morals?...but thats another matter)

"The word of thy Lord doth find its fulfillment in truth and in justice: None can change His words: for he is the one who heareth and knoweth all"
(6:115)

This is contradicted somewhat in (2:106) (read it for yourself, these blatant contradictions are found all over the books of the three big monotheisms, which makes things awfully confusing for its believers)

Either way, all over the Koran it does quite clearly state that those who fight against the infidels will have a higher place in heaven

"Not equal are those believers who sit[at home] and receive no hurt, and those who strive to fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than those who sit [at home]. Unto all [in faith] Hath Allah promised good: But those who sit [at home] by a special reward" (4:95)

Like I've said I've met many Muslims and practicers of Islam that are perfectly decent people, but its the PEOPLE who are decent and nonviolent, not the religion. "good people will continue do good things, evil people will continue to do evil things, but for a good person to do evil things, that takes religion"

 

[Firecat]

The Quran was revealed over a number of decades, during a time when Muslims were engaged in several battles. So a lot of the quotes were actually geared towards those people specifically at the time. Kill the infidels you will be meeting on the battlefield that day. You will find in the Quran sayings about how you shouldn't be the aggressor, how you shouldn't kill innocent people and how you have your religion and we have ours, and it should be respected.