Just readings and thoughts in the decision of the Swiss government to ban building minarets over Mosques recently built.
Beginning with a phrase to be said to stop any of those hunt in swamp water as we refuse and deny the decision taken by the Swiss government to ban building minarets over the mosques that are newly built. If there is a banning decree it shouldn't be applied on all the cases but it should give consideration to each case separately from the others, meaning that if there is a building that could cause danger on the state or the people of Switzerland following any community, a church a mosque or a synagogue on the land of Switzerland so the state of Switzerland has the right to ban it for the welfare of the whole state as in any country of the world the welfare of people go over and beyond the welfare of some people or some communities. Although we deny and refuse this decision taken by the Swiss government to put it on the whole mosques built specially with what Switzerland enjoy of neutrality and democracy, but if the state of Switzerland insists on taking this decision there should be an announcement to clarify this decision.
But let's have a reading to the decision to find it more than a racial decree so we should not freeze ourselves or to bury our bodies in sand but we should give our ears to the words given by Jesus Christ saying," before we take the wrong out of the eyes of your brother, take the stick out of your own eyes".
If the Arabs and the Muslims living in Switzerland are strangers or foreigners denying this decision, so what about the citizens of this country who live on this land, the churches are built, the walls are renovated but all is done hardly as well as it is in Egypt. I know myself some Churches in Egypt especially in the Delta where the Christians are not allowed to put a cross over the Churches' domes as the symbol of Christianity, so how do we blame the state of Switzerland!
If we leave Egypt, we find other countries like the United Arab Emirates that is more opened on the world and speaks proudly about democracy so when I went I visited Abu Dhabi months ago as a guest in Abu Dhabi satellite channel T.V. I wished to visit a church for the Coptic Orthodox Church known as the Church of Saint Antonuoss,. I went by car and firstly said to myself it is easy to know where the church is as there will be a cross over the dome
But then came the shock and disappointment when I knew that the state there doesn't allow any cross over the dome of any Cathedral or Church, the guests in the same TV program with me were Dr. Hassan Abu Laban, the professor of the Prophet's biography and Islamic Sharri'a and another professor from Saudi Arabia with another guest from Lebanon
The Saudi Arabian professor told me that it is not allowed or even possible to build a Church in the Island of the Arabs as there must not be any other religion than Islam. I told him that some Christians are there in Saudi Arabia, he replied that they work and they are not citizens so then I understood why Saudi Arabia refuses building a Church even in Jeddah or any other far place from the Medina or Mecca while there is a mosque in the Vatican, the birth place for Catholicism.
So why is the rage and calling the Swiss state of being in enmity to Islam, and to describe it as a racial state while we were the first to root the seeds of racism when we don't accept the other, to refuse building places for worship as happening in Saudi Arabia or the refusal of raising the cross on the Churches' domes in the United Arab Emirates.
These are just reading and thoughts running around the decision of the Swiss state to ban building minarets over mosques that are recently built but to leave the old ones as they are either having minarets or not.
Dr. Naguib Gibraeel,
President of the," Egyptian Union", Organization for Human Rights.
Nag_ilco@hotmail.com
22030009-0106095627
