Taj Hargey Pontificates on Swiss Minaret Ban

Tuesday, 01 December 2009 14:41

Taj Hargey (pictured), chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, adds his voice to commentary on the Swiss referendum result to ban the building of new minarets in a guest column in The Times today.

He says:

'Switzerland’s referendum vote to ban minarets is needlessly xenophobic but it does not infringe the religious liberty of Swiss Muslims. Minarets remain emblematic of mosques in the Muslim heartlands but there is no theological reason why houses of worship in the West have to incorporate such towers.

'Although the Swiss have been convinced by right-wing zealots that minarets are a problem, local Muslims should not embrace a victim mentality. They must confront the toxic radicalisation of their faith that is imported from overseas.'

'When European Muslims unthinkingly endorse this warped theology [Wahhabism] by desiring medieval Sharia, defending honour killings, stoning to death, forced marriages, Muslim exceptionalism and a separatist society, they only invoke fear and exacerbate anti-Muslim sentiment. When Europe’s Muslims extol such un-Koranic doctrines as the niqab (face veil), they exclude themselves from the mainstream.'

Not that his views are at all surprising. Hargey is in the habit of making Muslims out to be the cause of their own misfortune. His reaction to President Nicolas Sarkozy's remarks on the banning of the burqa was to suggest that Muslims in Europe were blindly imitating a 'foreign-inspired Muslim clergy' when choosing to wear the face veil. His comments here on Muslims 'defending honour killings, stoning to death, forced marriages or Muslim exceptionalism and separatism' are just as wide of the mark.

Blaming Swiss Muslims for supposedly following a 'warped theology' is just the sort of argument right wing racists like to employ. Their supposition that European Muslims are not European at all, but outposts of a foreign and alien culture, then allows them to dictate the terms of what a European Islam should look like, denying Muslims the right to make these decisions for themselves as citizens of Europe. Whether this be the choice of women to veil their faces, or of Muslim communities to commission mosque designs that incorporate a minaret.

Little wonder Hargey is rolled out to repeat his obnoxious claim that Muslims in Switzerland, or elsewhere in Europe, should relinquish minarets in their architectural design of mosques the better to blend in. Hargey appears to conform to the sort of treatment of Islam and Muslims that the right wing SVP would be entirely comfortable with – one that discriminates against them and treats them as alien residents.

Comments

Add New