Zurich voters reject ban on “suicide tourism”
Voters in Zurich overwhemingly rejected on Sunday proposed bans on assisted suicide and “suicide tourism” — foreigners traveling to Switzerland to receive help ending their lives. Only 15.5 percent of voters in the local referendum backed a ban on assisted suicide, while nearly 22 percent supported a ban on suicide tourism, final results showed. About 200 people commit assisted suicide each year in Zurich.
Assisted suicide has been allowed in Switzerland since 1941 if performed by a non-physician who has no vested interest in the death. Euthanasia, or “mercy killing,” is legal only in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the U.S. state of Oregon. Many terminally ill foreigners — particularly from Germany, France and Britain — travel to Switzerland to commit suicide, taking advantage of the Swiss rules which are among the world’s most liberal.
But a rise in the number of foreigners seeking to end their lives in Switzerland, and a study showing that more and more people seeking assisted suicides in the country do not suffer from a terminal illness, have provoked heated debate.
The Swiss Evangelical People’s Party, which had supported the bans, said it regretted the outcome but was pleased it had prompted so much discussion. “We now need to make sure that assisted suicide isn’t just extended without limit and also that suicide tourism with foreigners is critically monitored,” it said in a statement.
The Swiss government has said it is looking to change the law on assisted suicide to make sure it was used only as a last resort by the terminally ill, and to limit “suicide tourism.”
The right-to-die group Exit has agreed rules to govern assisted suicide with prosecutors in Zurich in the hope they might eventually form the basis of national regulation. Foreigners are not explicitly excluded under the new rules, but a Swiss doctor who prescribes the deadly anesthetic must have met the person twice over a period of time to be sure of their wishes.
Many Egyptian Christians voted ‘no’ on constitution, fearing Islamists
Many Egyptian Christians say they voted to reject proposed constitutional amendments in a referendum on Saturday because they fear hasty elections to follow may open the door for Islamist groups to rise to power. It turned out they were in the minority — 77% of those voting supported the proposed changes.
Parliamentary elections should take place in late September followed by presidential elections in December, giving scant time for new parties to organise, including ones representing the aspirations of Christians. Foremost among these aspirations is the creation of a civil state where religion is not a basis for legislation.
It is widely assumed that quick elections would give an advantage to the well-established Muslim Brotherhood, a group founded in the 1920s which has emerged as the best organised political force since Hosni Mubarak was toppled from power.
“I fear the Islamists because they speak in civil slogans that have a religious context, like when one said he believed in a civil Egypt but at the same time no woman or Copt should run for president,” said Samuel Wahba, a Coptic doctor.
The Islamist group has always sought to reassure Copts, who make up about 10 percent of 80 million citizens, saying they have the same rights as other Egyptians. But they have also historically opposed the idea of a Copt assuming the presidency.
Coptic Christians also want the new constitution to do away with Article 2, which says Islam is the religion of the state and Islamic jurisprudence the main source of legislation — a point of tension with Islamists. “I voted ‘no’, because I don’t want to return to the old constitution or a patchwork of the old constitution and a tyrannical president after such a great revolution,” Wahba said.
Some church leaders advised their congregations to reject the amendments as a patriotic effort to support pro-democracy Egyptians who seek a civil state.
Bashir plans Islamic law if Sudan splits, defends flogging woman
Sudan will adopt an Islamic constitution if the south splits away in a referendum next month, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Sunday. The vote on independence for south Sudan is scheduled to start in three weeks and was promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended a civil war between the mainly Muslim north and the south, where most follow traditional beliefs and Christianity.
“If south Sudan secedes, we will change the constitution and at that time there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and ethnicity,” the president told supporters at a rally in the eastern city of Gedaref. “Sharia (Islamic law) and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language,” he said.
An official from south Sudan’s main party criticised Bashir’s stance, saying it would encourage discrimination against minorities in the north and deepen the country’s international isolation.
The 2005 peace deal ending the civil war set up an interim constitution which limited sharia to the north and recognised “the cultural and social diversity of the Sudanese people.”
Analysts expect most southerners to choose independence in the poll, due to start on January 9 and last for a week. Read the full story by Khaled Abdel Aziz here.
Bashir also defended police shown lashing a woman in footage that appeared on the video-sharing website YouTube. “If she is lashed according to sharia law there is no investigation. Why are some people ashamed? This is sharia,” he said. Floggings carried out under Islamic law are almost a daily punishment in northern Sudan for crimes including drinking alcohol and adultery.
wakerupper,
foolishness – there is nothing just with sharia law. It’s just if you are a man – slavery if you are a woman and discrimination (or worse) to all who believe in anything other than islam.
go build a country of ‘peace’ – ha, good luck with that crazy
Muslim group aims to reverse Swiss minaret ban
A Swiss Islamic group has said it was launching a popular initiative to reverse a ban on building new minarets in the Alpine state, saying voters would decide differently if the matter came up for referendum again. Last year, 57.5 percent of Swiss voters approved a ban on the construction of new minarets, drawing international condemnation. The government had rejected the initiative as violating the constitution.
The plan to reverse the minaret ban comes a day after a majority of Swiss voted to back expulsion of foreigners convicted of serious crimes, the latest sign of growing hostility to immigration.
The text of the proposed initiative will state that the ban on building minarets is to be stricken from the constitution, the Central Islamic Council of Switzerland said on Monday. “Today we can clearly say that accepting the ban has brought neither the voters nor this country any profit,” said Nicolas Blancho, president of the group. “This (new referendum) will also show that we respect democracy and stick to local law.”
The Berne-based Council says it has 1,700 members. In May the Federal Migration Bureau excluded it from an inter-cultural dialogue, saying it first needed to condemn the notion of stoning of women as a punishment.The Swiss-born Muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan called him “a marginal figure in the Muslim landscape.” About 350,000 Muslims live in Switzerland, which has a population of 7.7 million.
When asked why voters would decide differently should the question of minarets come up again for referendum, Oscar Bergamin, an advisor to the group, answered: “People today are much better able to differentiate. They’re better informed and have time to become still better informed in coming years.”
Both the expulsion and the minarets initiative were put forward by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which has mined increasing fear about immigration in recent years to become the country’s biggest political movement. Referendums are common in Switzerland and have been held on issues ranging from health insurance to smoking bans.
Turkey needs to re-interpret secularism – senior MP
Turkey has to re-interpret its principles of secularism to adapt to a changing society, an AK Party member in charge of drafting a new constitution said, joining a growing debate over the Muslim country’s identity.
Turkey, a rising regional power which aspires to join the European Union, was founded by Kemal Ataturk as a secular republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. But a power shift led by a new middle class of observant Muslims which forms the backbone of the AKP government is challenging Turkey’s ability to reconcile Islam and secularism.
In the lastest twist of a long-running dispute, Turkey’s Higher Education Board last week ordered Istanbul University, one of Turkey’s biggest, to stop teachers from expelling female students who wear the Muslim headscarf from classes.
The headscarf, banned at university and public institutions, is one of the most touchy issues in the culture wars.
“We respect Turkey’s principles of secularism, but these need to be re-interpreted,” said Burhan Kuzu, chairman of the constitutional commission in parliament, controlled by the AKP. “The headscarf issue for example is not about secularism, but about individual liberties. Turkey’s new constitution should focus on democratic values and individual rights.”
Turkey’s Erdogan scores reform referendum victory
Turkish voters strongly backed constitutional reforms on Sunday, handing a government led by conservative Muslims a new victory in a power struggle with secular opponents over the country’s direction.
“The winner today was Turkish democracy,” Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told followers. Erdogan had portrayed the reforms as an effort to boost the Muslim nation’s democracy and help its European Union candidacy.
Though Erdogan’s AK party has pushed political and economic reforms and spearheaded Turkey’s drive for EU accession since coming to power in 2002, the secular establishment accuses it of using its parliamentary majority to introduce a hidden Islamist agenda. Until the advent of AK, a secular elite had held power since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey in 1923. With the army’s once-formidable power clipped by EU-driven reforms, high courts are seen as the secularists’ last redoubt.
Liberal on economic issues, and conservative on social policy matters, AK depicts itself as a Muslim version of Europe’s Christian Democrat parties, and denies opponents’ accusations that it has an Islamist agenda.
In 2008, Erdogan’s government tried to lift a ban on women wearing headscarves from attending universities, but the move was blocked by the Constitutional Court. Analysts expect AK, which draws its core support from a rising middle class of observant Muslims, to try again.
Kenya PM blasts judges for barring Islamic courts from constitution
Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has attacked the country’s judiciary as an obstacle to reform after its high court ruled it would be discriminatory to entrench kadhi courts — Islamic courts that rule on the basis of sharia — in Kenya’s constitution. The ruling came three months before Kenyans vote in a referendum on a proposed new constitution, seen as an important step towards ensuring that post-election violence which shook east Africa’s largest economy in 2008 is not repeated.
Opposition to the Muslim courts brought together Christian clergy and some politicians to oppose the proposed constitution. The kadhis’ courts deal with matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance among Muslims.
A three-judge panel of the high court said religious courts should not be enshrined in the constitution because it ran counter to the principle of separation of state and religion.
Kenya’s population is about 45% Protestant, 33% Roman Catholic and 10% Muslim, the rest following indigenous faiths or other beliefs. The referendum has heightened differences between Kenya’s Muslims and its Christian churches, which have criticised the draft constitution for including the Islamic courts and allowing abortion in certain circumstances.
Here are some related reports from Kenyan media:
Church lawyers say Muslims to blame for kadhi ruling — Daily Nation, 27 May 2010
Swiss minaret ban reversal vote in pipeline
Swiss liberals are considering a new referendum to overturn the ban on building new minarets in the country, Sunday papers reported, as Libya’s Muamar Gaddafi warned the ban played into the hands of terrorists.
Club Helvetique, a group of over 20 Swiss intellectuals, will draw up an action plan to overturn the ban, which has drawn widespread criticism abroad and prompted hundreds of people to take to the streets this weekend in Zurich, Basel and Berne.
“A new initiative is the most democratic way of achieving this,” constitutional lawyer Jörg Müller told Sonntag.
Voters adopted the ban in a referendum a week ago, defying the government and parliament which had warned the right-wing initiative violated the Swiss constitution, freedom of religion and a cherished tradition of tolerance.
Two complaints questioning the legality of ban had already been handed to Switzerland’s Federal Court, Sonntag said.
Bishop of Arabia dismayed by minaret ban in Swiss homeland
Many supporters of the Swiss ban on minarets justified it with the argument that limitations on mosques in Europe were permissible because Christians can’t build churches in some Muslim countries. This was also a recurring theme in comments to FaithWorld (see here and here). But doesn’t this tit-for-tat approach simply provide further arguments for Muslim authorities who don’ t want to concede more religious freedom to their Christian minorities?
One man uniquely placed to judge this is the Swiss-born Roman Catholic Bishop Paul Hinder. Based in Abu Dhabi, he is at the frontline of the “reciprocity” debate on treatment of Christian minorities in the Middle East. In an interview in today’s French Catholic daily La Croix, Hinder says he was “dismayed” that the minaret ban passed in a referendum last Sunday. “For us Christians in Arabia, it will certainly not make our work easier, although some might think they have done us a favour by saying yes to this initiative,” he said.
“Nobody can deny that the ban on minarets punishes a specific religious community, whose members in Switzerland have done nothing wrong,” he added. “I certainly understand the irrational fears of many Swiss faced with the heightened visibility of religion that they previously knew only by hearsay but now find right at their doorsteps or in the apartment next door.”
Swiss who supported the ban seem to think that Muslims can live in Switzerland as long as they keep out of sight, Hinder said. “If that’s so,” he remarked, “then a mosque should look like a Swiss chalet and the call to prayer, if any, must be done from the balcony with an Alpine horn!” In his opinion, a minaret was no less foreign to the Swiss landscape than the golden arches of McDonald’s “which seems to have almost a force of religious attraction for many people.”
“Hopefully this result, which is surprising for me, will at least lead to a more thorough debate on the question of how far religion has the right or even duty to be visible in society, “ he said, adding that the referendum result will certainly not go down in the history books as “a glorious page for direct democracy.”
What do you think? Should western countries respond to restrictions on Christian minorities in Muslim countries by putting limits on Muslims in the west?
These Muslim haters used to hate Jews some time back, Same people were behind Genocide of 6 million Jewish people, Now they are coming up false stories of Islamic atrocities on Christian countries, while attacking Many Muslim countries and destroying them .
Search google images with this text “Church Masque” , There is not a single Christian majority country in world where both Masque and Churches are side by side, You will find hundreds of photos from Muslim majority countries where Churches and Masques are side by
side. So that means when Christian are majority they don’t allow masque near their Churches. but tolerant Muslims do.
White Christianity is totalitarian ideology, They don’t tolerate any body who does not look like them , talk like them or walk like them. Red Indians were first victims of this intolerant cult, than blacks, than people in their Colonies, than Jews (WW2), Now Muslims
are new target of this cult.
The Swiss minaret ban and other trends for Islam in Europe
Switzerland’s vote to ban minarets on mosques there raises the question of whether anything similar might happen elsewhere in Europe. Researching this for an analysis of the vote today, I found experts distinguished between actually banning an Islamic symbol such as the minaret and using the minaret example to fan voters’ fears and boost a (usually far-right) party’s chances at the polls. It seems Switzerland’s trademark direct democracy system makes it possibly the only country in Europe where both seem possible right now.
This distinction could become more important in coming months as far-right parties, as they are expected to do, try to exploit the minaret ban to rally support for their anti-immigration policies. The Swiss far right has already suggested going for a ban of full facial veils (aka burqas and niqabs) next. Marine Le Pen, deputy leader of France’s National Front, has called for a referendum in France not only on minarets, but also on immigration and a wide array of other issues linked to Muslims. Filip Dewinter, head of Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, said he wanted to change zoning laws there to ban “buildings that damage the cultural identity of the surrounding neighbourhood”. It remains to be seen how far they can get with these demands.
At the same time, the consensus reaction from politicians and the press across Europe today was critical of the Swiss vote. Most of the excited calls for more action come from fringe parties the majority parties keep at a distance (except the Northern League, which is part of Silvio Berlusconi’s government in Italy). Referendums are not as easy to stage in other European countries and are even banned in Germany, where the up-and-coming team of Hitler andGoebbels used them before 1933 to rally support for the Nazi Party.
Muslims in Europe were naturally shocked by the vote and worried about what might come next. The possibility of further pressure on them cannot be ignored because globalisation is forcing European societies to deal with increasing religious, ethnic and cultural diversity. While not denying that pressure, which naturally does not make life welcoming for Muslims here, let’s look at a few trends that seem to get drowned out in the headlines.
The first is that mosques are now part of the European landscape. There were some quite raw confrontations over them in the 1980s and 1990s in the countries with bigger and older Muslim communities such as France, Britain and Germany. There are still some heated debates, as the uproar over the plan for a large Turkish mosque in Cologne showed. But for the most part, those mosque projects have gone ahead. In the Cologne case, despite repeated criticism and far-right protests, the new mosque will have two 55-meter minarets — tall for an average church, but nothing like the 157-meter spires above the city’s famous Catholic cathedral.
Just like a bell tower or spire is normal but not necessary for a church, the minaret and the loud public call to prayer — both regular features in Muslim countries — are optional elements for mosques. Almost no mosques in Europe use loudspeakers for the adhan, preferring to keep the call to prayer within the mosque, and many of them do without a minarets or agree to shorten their planned heights to make them fit into the local cityscape. These details can be negotiated constructively, if both sides — repeat, both sides — bring the necessary good will to the table.
Another fact is that there is now roughly enough mosque space for Europe’s Muslims, according to recent estimates, so the phase of active expansion of mosques and prayer rooms — which created the initial tensions with majority populations — may be waning. In some areas, a new one has started as Muslim communities take root and want to “trade up” from makeshift prayer rooms to better and more visible mosques. That can create new tensions. This was the case in Cologne, where Turkish-German Muslims are swapping a mosque set up in a former factory for the elegant new purpose-built mosque that caused so much controversy. But these controversies take place in cities where many locals now know some Muslim neighbours and take their side in the conflict. Do difficulties remain? Sure. But do situations develop? Certainly. Many critical commentators don’t take that dynamism enough into account.
Just because most Christians no longer consider most of the teachings of the Bible (especially the Old Testament) to be relevant today does not mean Muslims are going to accept that attitude toward the Qur’an, regardless of what governments impose on their Muslim populations.
Geez! I can’t believe how easily Europeans get bent out of shape!
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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