Swiss Ban Minarets: Is This About Women's Rights or Wronging Religion?

What began as a xenophobic and Islamophobic campaign on the part of a ring-wing party intent on protecting the Swiss culture and skyline from the influence of the Muslim immigrant populations somehow transformed into a statement against symbols of male power. With a boost of support from women's rights advocates, Swiss voters passed a ban Sunday against the construction of minarets (the towers on mosques from which the call to prayer is issued). But does this really protect women's rights, or just impinge on the religious rights of both men and women?

Advocates of the ban claim that opposition is tantamount to supporting women's oppression, and that weakness here would pave the way for forcing women across the country into burkas. Excuse me if I doubt that the 4% of Switzerland's population who practice Islam would be able to force the women of this secular and three-quarters Christian population.

Amnesty International points out that this ban on minarets is discriminatory because it does not also apply to Christian spires, which I'd call an equally phallic symbol -- and given that the majority of the country is Christian, shouldn't we be more worried about potential gender injustices stemming from that religion? After all, about 40% of Swiss are Roman Catholic, and just a few years ago the Pope issued a statement against those dastardly feminist ideologies that support the crazy notion that men and women are created equal. And last year, the Vatican let any liberal-leaning Catholics know that if they dared to ordain any female priests, the women of God would be immediately excommunicated.

Islam has been used as a justification for women's rights violations before and will be used so in the future, but that hardly makes it unique as a religion. When it's used in such a way -- like actually forcing women to wear burkas -- then I'm the first to support taking steps to protect gender justice. As it happens, I expect plenty of chances to blog in the future about true women's rights violations stemming from conservative Islam. (They'll fit nicely alongside the posts criticizing the abuses of conservative Christianity -- I'm not done with you yet, Vatican.) However, when Muslims want to stick a tower on their mosque, so that it can issue a call to prayer to men and women who choose to attend, this feminist has a hard time seeing the women's rights rationale.

Unless you want to ban all religious symbols (and probably a slew of capitalist ones too) as emblems of male power that attack women's rights, this argument just doesn't hold water. You can dress up xenophobia and religious intolerance in fancy rhetoric all you want, but that won't change what it is. I'm disappointed to see feminism and women's rights co-opted to undermine religious freedom, when there are so many serious gender problems to attend to.

Photo courtesy of watchsmart's Flickr photostream