BY DANNY FRIES
Published December 2, 2009
To the Daily:
More like this
To call Rick Durance's response to the Swiss minaret ban a poor attempt at capturing the empathy of every bleeding heart on campus would be an understatement (Minaret ban in Switzerland is unjust toward Muslims, 12/01/2009). It is not wrong to question this decision, but his manner of questioning it was misguided.
The minarets are used to give loud religious announcements of prayer times to a public that is not uniformly Muslim. It is quite a triumph that the Swiss used the most democratic solution rather than simply ban these announcements outright. How can Durance claim that this is a "travesty of democracy" when it is democracy in its purest form? The injustice was not the banning of the minarets, but rather the use of the minarets as a platform for public announcement.
While Durance claims that any number of religious and intellectual freedoms have been infringed upon, he should keep in mind that the Swiss are only responding naturally to what they feel are infringements on their own freedoms. A better way to address the ban would be to question why the Swiss voted for it, rather than dismiss the results of the vote as unjust and prejudiced.
Danny Fries
LSA senior
