My Brother: There are only 4 minarets in Switzerland. Ban on ritual animal killing was on the table, but rejected. Didn’t want to offend Judaism. But a racist Europe would be a racist Eruope. http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20091130/cm_csm/yramadan
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Me: The price of living in someone else’s country is usually an imperfect citizenship or worse, and if you were Swiss, would you want minarets in your town anyway? Why does Islamic aesthetics have to be so hard? Have you seen the mosques that have been built in Europe? They look like public toilets, only with arches. Couldn’t European Muslims at least have created some desirable architecture?
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My Brother: Yes. But I agree with you regarding minarets. While the explicit rules about halal and haram meat (kosher/non-kosher) are intrinsically part of Islamic rituals, there is no requirement for a minaret. Minarets were a way of calling Muslims to prayer at a time when an architectural solution was the most convenient way of keeping everyone’s schedule in synch. Effectively, they solved the same problem as Big Ben solved for old London. Switzerland can argue that nowadays there are more convenient ways of keeping track of time, namely the devices that Switzerland is famous for.
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Me: Minarets could still be incorporated into the design of mosques in Switzerland and elsewhere and be architecturally functional and aesthetically timeless at the same time. Incorporating minarets into a modern design would be paying homage to Islamic tradition and making them functional would be easy to do. My point was that if Muslims are going to be building mosques in Europe, why not build mosques that rival the great cathedrals of Europe, if not in size, at least in beauty and in spirit. Have a look at the gorgeous Bourges in France, http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/bourges-cathedral-photos/slides/ext-night-wp-gfdl.
I believe Europeans are seeing the Muslim presence in Europe in the same way Americans view their housing projects and their viewpoints are not so mute.
And lets face it, outside of a few centers on earth there are not too many examples of Islamic aesthetics that inspire. Reasonable expressions of Islamic aesthetics can be found in Iran, Turkey, and Spain, and this is because in each of these instances there was a significant pre-Islamic civilization that allowed for a fusion to occur. Islam’s contribution to humankind was limited to the soundness of it’s political and social order, at a time when other systems had fallen behind in providing for social equity. What about in 2009?
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My Brother: Quite agree!Beauty is its own argument. I wish you would blog this important insight on Iranian.com.
