No voy a hacer ningún comentario extenso sobre la noticia. Para mí es una simple cuestión de libertad religiosa: lo mismo que los cristianos pueden levantar su Iglesia y su campanario, los musulmanes tienen derecho a levantar su mezquita y también su minarete. La libertad de unos acaba donde empieza la de otros, y construir un minarete en una mezquita no interfiere en la libertad de nadie. No me parece de recibo sacar a colación los matrimonios forzados o los crímenes "de honor" para defender la prohibición de edificar minaretes, como si la diferencia no estuviera ya clara en el código penal.
A continuación enlazo la opinión de varios medios y comentaristas poco sospechosos de "izquierdismo" o "panarabismo" y que critican el resultado del referendum suizo. Admiro la independencia suiza y si alguien decide boicotearles haré una compra extra de queso emmental. Pero esta decisión es un error y puede afectar a su imagen de nación neutral y tolerante.
Editorial de The Times:
There are only four minarets in the whole country, and none is used to call the faithful to prayer. There are some 350,000 Muslims in Switzerland, or 4 per cent of the population. Most bear as much similarity to the theocratic fanatics of al-Qaeda and the Taleban as Archbishop Rowan Williams does to the snakehandling sects of Appalachia. Many come from the Balkans, where a Muslim population recently suffered ferocious persecution under the genocidal designs of Slobodan Milosevic. (...)
A liberal society cannot countenance claims that the sensibilities of particular religious groups take precedence over, or even rank alongside, the ability of a free press to publish and artists to work free of intimidation. The libertarian issue in Switzerland is exactly the reverse. An attempt to stigmatise a religious faith and restrict freedom of worship has gained popular approval. In the name of defending the principles of a constitutional society against religious intolerance, Swiss voters have adopted intolerance.
Editorial del Wall Street Journal:
Banning minarets won't do anything to assimilate Switzerland's or Europe's Muslims, or to ensure that economic opportunity is available to everyone of whatever creed, or to deal with Western Europe's demographic problem of too few newborns.
The ban, in other words, does too much and too little at once. Too much because it becomes a very visible and easily exploited symbol of supposed European intolerance. But it accomplishes too little because it seeks merely to hide from view the problems that gave rise to the fear of the minaret in the first place.
Daniel Hannan, eurodiputado tory y admirador de la democracia directa suiza, critica la decisión en tres aspectos:
First, it is at odds with that other guiding Swiss principle, localism: issues of this kind ought surely to be settled town by town, or at least canton by canton, not by a national ban.
Second, it is disproportionate. There may be arguments against the erection of a particular minaret by a particular mosque – but to drag a constitutional amendment into the field of planning law is using a pneumatic drill to crack a nut.
Third, it suggests that Western democracies have a problem, not with jihadi fruitcakes, but with Muslims per se – which is, of course, precisely the argument of the jihadi fruitcakes.
El Vaticano también se opone a la prohibición suiza. Tyler Cowen en Marginal Revolution y David Kopel en Volokh Conspiracy tienen opiniones más matizadas. (HT: Hit & Run)
En La Libertad y la Ley preguntan si nos gustaría tener una mezquita al lado de casa. Yo la tengo, y no pasa nada.
