Vishnu and the Missing Minarets

Swiss Muslims are Swiss

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

In response to Jaideep Kulkarni who had asked why Indians should care if the Swiss ban minarets or mosques and whether it should concern us, NDTV’s Vishnu Som gave an astonishing reply. “Yes it does” he said. “It represents a fundamental threat to millions of Muslims in our country.”

Now, what you think of Switzerland’s decision is one thing. It is totally another to declare that the Swiss decision on minaret-building represents a “fundamental threat” to millions of Indian Muslims. So I asked Mr Som to explain why. His response? “Would you’ve been OK if your place of worship was banned in a country based on the premise that people of your religion are terrorists?”

That being neither here nor there, I repeated the question. And also asked if Saudi Arabia’s ban on temples, churches, synagogues and other places of worship also constituted a “fundamental threat” to Indian Hindus, Christians, Jews and others.

Mr Som didn’t reply. He should have known better than to throw about phrases like “fundamental threat to millions of Indians” so carelessly. In fact if the likes of Mr Som don’t hype up the matter, millions of Indian Muslims wouldn’t know, wouldn’t care and would not be threatened by the absence of minarets in a country most of them wouldn’t ever set foot in.

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