Damn swiss voters, afraid of different religions and totally uninformed (see minaret controversy ). I feel profoundly sorry for those living in Switzerland who could feel attacked or rejected by such a stupid vote.

When I see the irrational fears people have in front of the their big book brothers and sisters, I sometimes wish we were at war against some evil bloody aliens. We might then realize how close we are…

I hate being swiss today.

“Woe to the man through whom scandal comes” (Matthew 18:7),
read it like René Girard does.

afterthoughts [edit: 3 days after]

This vote has made quite some noise here in Switzerland and has taken some important part of my brain cycles.

In the political context in which I live, I struggle against discrimination in the broadest sense, feeling like an alien myself. This means I am for the removal of all gender related laws (homosexual marriage and adoption rights), against sexist advertising, for the father’s rights (in case of separation), for a legal way to require a part-time (80%) job to take care of your kids (without the possibility of your boss to say no) whatever your gender is and against huge salary disparities (we all do our best to make the world go round, why should some be working poor ?).

groups

From my political point of view, I do not like religion based groups, just like I hate gender based groups (I’m a person somewhere on the boy—girl line, maybe closer to girl then boy actually). I hate this idea of a “Muslim world”, a “Juif world” or a “Christian world”. There’s just one world and it’s made of people. Some of these people have religions, thoughts and ideas but that does not make them a “mass” or a “world”. Groups have been invented for wars and for the lazy, propaganda eager thinkers.

Seeing this vote against minarets from the last point of view can be understood as “we feel that the values defended by the religious group who could be interested in building minarets are too intolerant and we do not want to support them”. I don’t want to be tolerant with intolerance either so this message could be ok: but this vote was not called:

refuse support to intolerant groups or archaic religious thoughts

It was targeted against a particular community and that’s really evil. People will feel directly attacked by such a vote even though they might not be concerned by the feelings of some voters.

Any other reason for this vote based on the rights of one group against another (atheists against monotheists, swiss against foreigners, Christians against Muslims, etc) is just stupidity at work.

There are many things we can dislike in most religions (their pretension to truth, their intolerance against homosexuality, the morality, their archaic views on sex, the patriarchalism) but it does not allow us to attack a group of believers with custom made laws.

I love minarets