Doha – The verbal war over Switzerland’s ban on building new minarets on mosques escalated Tuesday during a talk show when an Islamic academic condemned a key backer of the Swiss referendum as the “new Hitler of Europe.”The director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London, Azzam al-Tamimi, made the remarks on al-Jazeera broadcaster about the Swiss legislator Oskar Freysinger.
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“Freysinger is a danger for the future of Switzerland,” Tamimi said.
Freysinger, a member of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) that called the referendum, who was also a guest on the show, retorted that it was “absolutely a democratic decision” and that unlike the Swiss referendum, “Hitler did not allow people to vote.”
Freysinger also countered that in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the building of Christian churches is banned.
Al-Tamimi praised Swiss church leaders who spoke out against the ban. He called on the people of Switzerland to protect the reputation of their “beautiful, free country” by opposing the ban.
On November 29, more than 57 per cent of Swiss voters agreed that new minarets on mosques should be banned. The vote has reignited passions around the role of Islam in Swiss society and other parts of Europe with large Muslim populations.
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party came to power after a series of democratic votes during Germany’s Weimar Republic of the 1920s and 1930s. Only after he was named chancellor in 1933 did Hitler transform the country into a totalitarian one-party state and ban free elections.
Actually, Hitler did allow people to vote — for a while. His Nazi party came to power peacefully through democratic means, not through a coup. And a few months after coming to power, in March 1933, he did allow an election with opposition parties. The Nazis only received 43.9% of the vote. He corrected that error and held a totally sham election later in the year with no opposition permitted.
And anyone who holds Saudi Arabia’s actions as a justification for a policy is a rasha.
The ban is very disturbing, but the comparison to the systematic murderer of not only unarmed people, but an unarmed nation, is inappropriate.
Unfortunately too many of us have decided that this is an acceptable slur to throw around at those we disagree with so we are in danger of loosing moral authority on demanding such analogies not be made frivolously.
Total rasha. But what is good for the goose is good for the gander. So the islamists should go complain to saudi arabia about not have free rights before coming to Europe or the US to complain.