Minars dot every corner of India I guess, but they are not allowed in Switzerland according to this link on BBC. The Swiss consider minarets as religious symbols and the extreme right wingers think that if they allow the Muslims to build minarets in the country, it’ll be like letting them take over.
This is a difficult situation for both the parties involved: the community that immigrates to another country, and the native community that embraces the immigrants, reluctantly or welcomingly. To understand this, first we have to understand why you emigrate from your native country and settle in a foreign land? It’s understandable you don’t like something in your native country, and the dislike is so compelling that you move to another country. You go to another country, and you take along bits and pieces of your culture and practices with you. When you settle down, you understandably want to recreate some of the milieu you left behind. Most people want to pray the way they used to pray in their native lands.
The natives of the host country, understandably, while not refusing you hospitality and citizenship, want to preserve their own way of living. We all love our own ways of living. Imagine someone coming to your home and re-arranging everything, telling you what to eat, when to sleep, when to wake up, and how you should place your furniture because this makes it comfortable for the one who has come to your place.
That said, especially when it comes to the West — I’m not starting a blame-game here — most of the western countries are developed and affluent because they exploited the weaker countries in Africa and Asia in the colonial times. The countries in Asia and Africa have their indigenous reasons for being poor and backward, still the western countries played a big role in it, and now their past has come to haunt them. So whether they like it or not, they’ll have to pay a price for the follies of their ancestor, because they are reaping the rewards of those follies now. The least they can do is be accommodating.
[tags]muslims, minarets, swiss, switzerland, west[/tags]
