Tolerance at Gunpoint?
Loutraki, Greece, December 2, 2009.
Salaroche

On Sunday, November 29, 2009, the Swiss people voted against erecting any more Minarets in Switzerland. Close to 58% of voters and 22 out of 26 Cantons basically said “we don’t want any more Minarets built on Swiss soil.”

The referendum’s process was, to the best of my knowledge, perfectly legal and orderly and, as far as I know, no one has voiced any complaints about the legitimacy of the results. In other words, last Sunday the Swiss people practiced what we have all come to know in the west as our constitutional right to collectively decide what direction we want our countries to go.

But now, on Tuesday, December 1, in Athens, just about one hour car-drive away from where I’m writing, Micheline Calmy-Rey, Switzerland’s Foreign Minister, stated that the Swiss people’s recent decision at the polls can be a security risk for Switzerland (to read the BBC article please click here). Is she saying that democracy is a risk for democratic countries?

At the bottom of this whole Minaret debate there’s the question of religious tolerance. In the west (i.e., mostly western Europe and the United States) we want to embrace diversity of religion in our societies because we’re pretty much aware that such diversity exists amongst ourselves and we want to be as tolerant as possible about each other’s personal or collective beliefs.

But, what happens when someone’s personal beliefs tend to run contrary to some very basic rights that we often hold as standard-bearers for western civilization? What happens when someone’s religious beliefs run contrary to freedom of choice, or equality of the sexes, or even something as simple as a woman's freedom to dress?

What happens when someone’s religious beliefs systematically run contrary to children’s rights (i.e., the right of very young girls no to be given in marriage to older men)? Or what happens when some of the leaders in some religious communities constantly incite rejection and hatred against the way people live in western countries? Countries that many of their adepts have immigrated to?

In other words, what comes first? Religious tolerance or civil rights? What I mean is: Are western countries willing to throw away the achievements of centuries of painful social struggle in the name of "religious tolerance”?

Whenever I’ve been to Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Bahrain, I've previously made myself very aware of the fact that their laws and ways of living are not western. Whenever I go there I abide by the laws, culture and traditions of those countries. And all western people who go there are hereby kindly advised to do the same.

Accordingly, even as the true believer in the equality of the sexes that I am, I never stood in the streets of Riyadh demanding that the women sitting flat on the sidewalks under the mid-day scorching sun, wearing stifling head-to-toe black garments, be allowed inside the air-conditioned restaurants where the local men were comfortably having lunch with their pals.

Frankly, it would be stupid of any westerner to do that, and risky too, as you could even get in trouble for it.

But the fact is that Muslim men discriminate against women in a flagrant, blatant way and Muslim children are brought up to believe that “women can never be as intelligent as men because women think with their heart, not with their head.”

And this they assert even as they’re very much aware that Muslim women generally score much higher than Muslim men in most university placement tests.

But I’m a westerner, and in the west we don’t openly hold those discriminatory beliefs against women. Many western men may still cling to the belief that they’re naturally more endowed in any meaningful sense than women are. But in the west most people want to believe in the equality of the sexes. We also want to believe in the equality of other rights too, like the freedom to hold whatever religious beliefs any individual may want to hold.

Even more remarkably so, and despite the efforts of the increasingly batty US religious right, in the west we don’t have theocracies. In the west we want our laws to be written using our capacity to rationally conceive the most egalitarian sociopolitical and economic environment that our present state of evolution may permit.

In the west the great majority of people don’t want to be guided by political leaders whose claim to authority is their alleged divine capacity to interpret any religious scriptures.

But that is not the case in Muslim countries.

For example, in the eyes of the great majority of Muslims, a woman has to subject herself to men because of men’s god-given superiority to know what’s best for everything, including her. And women have to cover their flesh as much as possible because their flesh is mentally disturbing to men and men need to have as much purity of mind as possible.

But, hey, if Muslim men want to think and act that way and if their women either willingly acquiesce or are incapable of doing anything against such kind of discriminatory rules, that’s OK with me. Just please don’t come and practice such way of being in the west.

In the west we have a different set of beliefs.

When I go to a Muslim country I act as much as possible according to their laws. If I know I won’t be able to adapt to their laws I should either leave that country and go back to my own country or go somewhere else where Muslim beliefs are not the law of the land. As simple as that.

When Muslim individuals come to the west they should know that in the west a woman’s legs and arms are not something women should be ashamed of and that when it comes to bathing or swimming women can show as much or their flesh as the local laws of decency permit. Period.

They should also know that women can eat, gather and pray in the same places that men do and that women have the same freedom of movement and expression that any man has. Period. If Muslims think that such ways are evil and unacceptable, then they should think more than twice before coming to live in the west. Period.

But now Switzerland’s Foreign Minister comes to Athens saying that the Swiss people’s decision to ban the construction of any more Minarets on Swiss soil is a threat to Switzerland’s security.

Excuse me?

Is she saying that the Swiss people HAVE to put up with those Minarets whether they want them and like them or not? Let’s remember that Minarets represent the intolerance that Muslim men systemically hold against women. Is Micheline Calmy-Rey saying that the Swiss people better tolerate such symbols of intolerance or face the risk of having some extremist members of the Swiss Muslim community blow themselves up in Switzerland’s markets in the name of their intolerant beliefs?

That’s tolerance at gunpoint. That’s an "accept-my-intolerant-ways-or-else-I’ll-blow-myself-up-and-you-with-me" situation. What Micheline Calmy-Rey is doing is simply giving in to blackmail.

The Swiss people should not be ashamed of themselves or afraid of anything for having expressed their will at the ballot box. The ones who should be ashamed of themselves are those who stand against Swiss democracy.

Tolerance at gunpoint is not tolerance. It’s giving in to threats and it amounts to cowardice.

Salaroche