The vote to ban minarets was not just supported by those with sinister intentions. It is not a racist ban, but a practical one and it was supported by many left-leaning politicians, including feminst author Julia Onken.

Switzerland, like the UK, is a Christian, but more accurately a secular country. It is the secularists, who care about preserving the freedom of their country who are fighting this battle.

The presence of mosques with towering minarets can radically change the feeling of a neighbourhood. It is almost like creating a 'ghetto' in the surrounding area, and those who feel uncomfortable with it will move out.

And yet Muslims can freely practise without the need for minarets, and without creating this divisive climate by building intimidating minarets.

Surely the presence in a country of multifarious religious buildings is one of the greatest outward signs of a truly democratic, open and tolerant society.

In banning the building of minarets (which do serve a purpose in facilitation the call to prayer - not dissimilar to the purpose of church steeples as a bell tower and a locator), the Swiss have tipped their hand. The only people who should feel uncomfortable or intimidated by minarets are those with racist tendencies - whether they know it or not.

The people of Switzerland voted by a majority to ban minarets. The majority rules. It therefore does not really matter what their intention was. Some of the voters almost certainly did have racist intent and a dislike of Muslims. In a democracy they have their right to express this dislike in a vote, especially in Switzerland where they have referendums on many things.

Majority rules in a democracy. But in order for a democratic society to work, the minorities have to be protected too. It is for this reason that laws should be created in order to protect the legitimate interests of those who would ordinarily be crushed by a pure majority rule system. It is a hard line to draw in a democracy to succumb to the wishes of the majority whilst still protecting minority interests. This Swedish banning of minarets is not a fair drawing of this line.

Switzerland is culturally a christian country, so the landscape should be of chruches rather than mosques with minarets. So it is understandable that communities would object to the constructions of minarets near or within their communities. Minarets are generally built with the intention to call to prayer which would be very intrusive in a country that values peace, quiet and privacy.

There are only four minarets in the whole country. This particular referendum was cause by the passing of the application to build 'one' more. This hardly seems like an Islamic cultural invasion sweeping into the ear of Europe.

While they may not fit in perfectly with the culture of Switzerland, countries and their culture adapt slowly and eventually to change.The Swiss claim to be peace-loving and tolerant, yet behave erratically by vindicating/ostracizing a specific community on the sole basis of faith.

Britain is not culturally a country where we believe that minarets would fit in, we ourselves tend to idealize Britain as a green land of rustic villages and churches, minarets have no part in this vision but we don't stop them being built.

And shouldn't because thousands of Muslims are British and being British should shape actively shape the culture of their country, like any traditionally/historically (Anglo-Saxon Irish catholic, later protestants after Henry the eighth, amended the dictates of the Pope on divorce) British person would. Church bells, as they exist in Switzerland - the land of clocks - are hardly conducive to peace and quiet; either.

Minarets represent the vangard of islamist values and culture that is marching accross Europe and the swiss are right to be willing to stand up and do something to stop it. Stopping minarets is a big symbolic victory showing that we will not allow Europe to be trampled over by radical islam despite its ever growing numbers in Europe. We are in grave danger of being swamped and losing our identities, which this ban helps preserve.

Well, this seems like a really radical position in itself! What is occurring in this argument is the confusing between Islam the religion and Islamic fundamentalists. This is something we need to be very careful of. The values in Islam are not that different to other monotheistic religions, but there are the extremists who take things too far. But then there are Christian extremists as well, so should churches be banned in order to stop that small segment of an entire religions populace? No of course not. The case would be different if the minarets were in the shape of planes crashing, but they are not. They are tall, white and rather serene looking. Nothing represents violence in those minarets.

Will Muslim Europeans be forced to lose 'their' identities and be treated as outcasts? The fact being, European Muslims exist: They are 'both' European and Muslim,

Therefore, to treat them as if they were to be non-Europeans(when they are officially/by-birth/by-any-other-standard European) simply because they are Muslim, is discrimination(something the Swiss culturally/historically abhor: at least on paper): Plain and simple.

Synagogues are places of worship, just as Mosques/Masjids are.

'Mosques' are not being banned. A distinct feature of a typical mosque is. This could be analogous to the removal of public displays of the pentacle star or cross or crescent.

Even though antisemitism qualifies as racism/xenophobia, this cannot be applied to the maltreatment of Muslims since Muslims come from separate blood lines therefore all types/kinds of races.

Again it is not the skin-colour of Muslims [since Muslims come in all colours shapes and sizes: White Muslims(Bosnia,Uzbekistan, other Muslim former soviet nations, many Arabs given their euro-ancestry), black Muslims(Somalia, South African Countries, America:Remember Malcolm-X and the nation of Islam?), oriental Muslims (Uighurs(wee-gurs) in China, Indonesians, Malaysians) and mixed(mostly brown) Muslims in most other places] that the Swiss fear/ban but their/our way of life: which constitutes wearing clothes & sporting beards that belong to the start of this century. And making prayer announcements in aggressive Arabic(from minarets) which most Europeans do not understand.

Muslims by practicing these 'foreign/strange/exotic' behaviors isolate/sever/alienate themselves from the the other people of the countries they are residents of. It is then in after-thought silly/double-minded to object to being singled out and rallied against.

The resounding Arabic call to prayer feeds to many non-Muslim Swiss residents...

(who see Arabic as threatening/strange/perhaps-even-dirty, In 'Angels and demons' the author of the 'da vinci code' relates the origin of the word 'Satan' from the Arabic word for the devil('shaitan') to describe satanic cults such as the Illuminati, as The Vatican considered Arabic to be a 'dirty language')

...the fear of Fundamentalist-Islamist-propaganda(yes, it 'is' Muslims that keep shooting themselves in the leg,metaphorically) that Muslims are taking over Europe(fear of the Neo-Ottomans).

Since the majority(by democratic vote) of the people in Switzerland are paranoid/fearful of the sound of the Azaan(call to prayer), then more minarets should not be built; since the propagator-y building of such, will only act as a confirmation of the despicable paranoid fear that Muslims are taking over.

Swiss Muslims don't need more minarets, they are living in Switzerland and make do with the minarets that are already there.

Swiss Muslims are also free to protest if they want more minarets, but the Swiss government must put a lid on Islamist-fundamentalist-propaganda, attacking it head on by not letting minarets be built until and unless, these propagandists stop scaring people about a contemporary Muslim invasion.Moderate Muslims should stop taking pride in such predictions and try to assuage fears of them, rather.

There is a dire need to make it clear to the European people that there is no Islamisation/Islamification movement to thwart all possibilities of a civil war, perhaps even apartheid(against brown people who fit the Muslim 'stereotype', even if they really are Sikh/Hindu/Jewish/Christian); by any means necessary(including banning the further building of minarets).

Given the history of this particular area of Europe, we should all be horrified at the Swiss ban proposal.

How would Jews feel if synagogues were being banned? Alternatively, if there were/was a ban on kosher meat?

What if it were church spires/steeples in a moderate Muslim country? We'd see it as a sign of the rise of radical Islam in the country. It is just the same in Switzerland. It signifies the worrying rise of the extreme right and Islamo-phobics, which we are seeing on the streets of the UK as members of the English Defence/Defense League, the 'Stop-the-Islamisation-of-Europe'-march our streets, protesters outside mosques and boycotting Muslim business/es.

For Europe's Jews, this is an all too familiar starting point.

The Azaan/call-to-prayer maybe in Arabic, just as Jewish sermons are mostly in Hebrew. The problem is that people do not understand Arabic or the meaning of the call to prayer, which is innocuously as follows:

Allah hu akbar(recited thrice): God is great Ashadhuana la illa ha illalla: I attest/testify to there being only one God/deity Ashadhuan Mohamed-ur-rasullalla: And also to Mohamed being the last Prophet hai yu lal salah(recited thrice): come to pray hai yu lal falah:(recited thrice): come to peace Allah hu akbar: God is great

As far as culture is concerned Islam has been steeped/grounded into European culture for centuries, some of the oldest mosques and libraries in the world today were built by Spanish moors. Many Eastern-European-former-soviet countries are presently Islamic states. Turkey was always predominantly Muslim.

I, as a child; read a European comic strip that featured a villain named Iznogoud (eponymous: Is-no-good) about a very Arabic/Turkish/Ottoman naive Caliph that I'm sure many Europeans are familiar with.

Western science today, owes its many roots to century old Middle-eastern,subcontinental and Oriental discoveries. The popular (fairly old)new-age concept of 'the wisdom of the east' originated from as far back as the Renaissance period of 'Enlightenment' when Europe was taken out of the church-dominated misery of the dark ages into the wonders of Al-Kindi Eastern mystery/knowledge/science (Ibn-e-sinna, Nafis among other Arabs advancing the field of biology, the word 'camera' comes from the Arabic word 'Kamra' meaning dark room, Chinese anatomy/acupuncture/autopsies- the first illustrations of all the organs in the human body are Chinese, the people of the subcontinent invented zero(a great mathematical innovation)/music(bag pipes-flute-connection?)/astronomy(the telescope)/art(calligraphy)/promiscuity(Arabic/Chinese-belly-dancing-concubines/The-kama-sutra-mughal-concubines(the subcontinent, what is the origin of the western orgy?)

People should be 'free' to look like exact replicas of Osama Bin Laden, chant in Arabic/Hebrew(what the majority bilingual largely atheist Swiss comprehend as angry gibberish) through load speakers atop towers, even if they do alienate their mostly blond naturalist Swedish-inspired Swiss neighbors and stimulate rioting.(in the end they'll play the oppression, freedom of speech and the right to be different card) this calls for a play of Creep-radio head.