The recent Swiss vote, minarets, and islamic triumphalism.

[pyotr filipivich]

I ran across this a while back, had to wait for the faster connection
to make the search worthwhile.

=== begin quoted text ===

The venerable Brill Encyclopedia of Islam (EOI) entry on minarets
makes plain that minarets are a political statement of Islamic
supremacism. Interestingly, given current Turkish Prime Minister
Erdogan�s provocative statement while mayor of Istanbul (the full
statement was quoted in a NY Times story
http://www.kurdistan.org/Washington/nyt.html by Stephen Kinzer from
2/16/1998: �The mosques are our barracks, the domes are our helmets,
the minarets are our swords, and the faithful are our army�), cited by
opponents of minaret construction in Switzerland�the observations from
the Brill EOI about the Ottoman perspective on minarets are of
particular note.

From the official Brill Encyclopedia of Islam entry on the minaret:

�It seems on the whole unrelated to its function of the adha-n [q.v.]
calling the faithful to prayer, which can be made quite adequately
from the roof of the mosque or even from the house-top. During the
lifetime of the Prophet, his Abyssinian slave Bila-l [q.v.], was
responsible for making the call to prayer in this way. The practice
continued for another generation, a fact which demonstrates that the
minaret is not an essential part of Islamic ritual. To this day,
certain Islamic communities, especially the most orthodox ones like
the Wahha-bi-s in Arabia, avoid building minarets on the grounds that
they are ostentatious and unnecessary. � It must be remembered,
however, that throughout the mediaeval period, the role of the minaret
oscillated between two polarities: as a sign of power and as an
instrument for the adha-n.�

[Re: Ottoman minarets]: �These gigantic, needle-sharp lances
clustered protectively, like a guard of honor, around the royal dome,
have a distinctly aggressive and ceremonial impact, largely dependent
on their almost unprecedented proportions; the pair of minarets
flanking the S�leymaniye dome are each some 70m. high.�

All Articles Copyright � 2007-2009 Dr. Andrew Bostom All Rights
Reserved, Printing is allowed for personal use only

== end of quote ==

Note well:

�The mosques are our barracks, the domes are our helmets, the
minarets are our swords, and the faithful are our army�), Turkish
Prime Minister Erdogan�s provocative statement while mayor of Istanbul
2/16/1998.

Or to put it another way: minarets are not the moral equivalent of
church steeples. Minarets are the moral equivalent of burning crosses
- an ideological claim to sovereignty.
-
pyotr filipivich
Most of the intelligentsia haven't studied history, so much
as they've absorbed the Correct Position on "History".