Swiss vote signals rise in Islamophobia

As nearly everyone agreed, the minarets themselves were not so important. The 400,000 Muslims living in Switzerland now have only four minarets. Their architecture disturbs almost no one, nor do muezzins call loudly over the rooftops five times a day. The minarets are symbols, and while few who voted for the ban said so openly, many thought "We can't even understand their foreign lingo. Keep ‘em out!"

Several sad ironies are involved. Switzerland has four official languages to begin with, which should breed tolerance, especially since German-speaking Swiss, (and it is they who voted most frequently against the minarets), has a folksy dialect which sounds rather quaint to people in Germany but is so difficult to understand that Swiss films shown there require sub-titles.

Cultural variety is a good thing, intelligent people generally believe, but it involves tolerance toward other people's cultures.

Another irony is more tragic. Christianity is not a constitutional requirement in Switzerland; religious freedom is supposed to be the rule. But it was Swiss authorities determined to keep their country Christian who turned away Jewish refugees from neighboring Germany during the Hitler years, resulting in death to most of them.

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