A vote occurred in Switzerland that will place a black eye on the country’s reputation concerning religious tolerance.

            For months there has been heated debate within Switzerland on the issue and early polling showed only mild support for the ban – around 30 percent.

            But almost 58 percent of Swiss voters cast their ballots in favor of a law banning the building of minarets.

            A minaret is a tall tower generally associated with the architecture of a mosque. The spires allow a high enough vantage point from which to make the call to prayer. However, given modern technology, the call is now projected through a speaker system, rendering the minaret.

             In fact, some of the earliest mosques don’t even have minarets. In the entire country of Switzerland, there are only four minarets attached to mosques.

            This points to a troubling issue brewing in Europe. In recent years, Europe has been dealing with the influx of Muslims to their countries and generally the immersion into local culture hasn’t gone smoothly.

            In France there was unrest over headscarf, or burqa. Germany had an issue with the building of some 200 new mosques, and offensive cartoons were published in Denmark. This points to a larger problem of encouraging citizens of countries to bury their heads in the sand instead of working issues out.

            In fact, the ban seems actually like a weak response. The ban only stipulates that no new minarets are built. The law does not affect the building of mosques or the four pre-existing minarets.

            There doesn’t seem to be much religious intolerance here on the surface. But looking deeper, the ban is a heavy-handed response because it becomes a very visible and easy example symbol of European intolerance toward its growing Muslim population.

            In a country like Switzerland, with only a five percent Muslim population, it seeks to purely hide the growing tension over integrating Muslims into Swiss culture. It’s a sad reality that the public can still be swayed by fear.

            Switzerland is apparently going through some sort of individuality crisis. This right swing of the political spectrum toward populist anti-immigration doesn’t bode well for the Swiss in the long run. Europe, for centuries, was caught up in nationalist fever.

            The party mainly behind the surge is the Swiss People’s Party, which is the largest political party in Switzerland. It first gained notoriety by using a campaign poster of a white sheep kicking black sheep off the Swiss flag.

            There have been other posters used especially for this campaign, including a Swiss flag sprouting black, missile-shaped minarets alongside a woman shrouded in a head-to-toe veil that shows only the eyes. This image starkly illustrates the determination of the right to play on deep-rooted fears that Muslim immigration would lead to an erosion of Swiss values.

            Any time such intolerance is used against a portion of society, it is extremely dangerous. Intolerance against certain minorities has occurred since World War II - look at Kosovo and the killing of Albanians by Serbians, or Darfur, when rebels thought the government was oppressing black Africans and favoring Afro-Arabs.

            Playing on the fear of another culture is a very dangerous game. Hopefully for the Swiss it doesn’t go any further.