Jacob Christensen

Today’s Swiss anti-minaret referendum (summary of the issue on Wikipedia) raises a number of interesting questions to a political scientist:

1. Political institutions play a role in the way politics are made: We would generally assume that the Swiss rules on referendum and voter initiative on the one hand is another veto point in the political process (i.e. it makes it harder to pass political decisions). On the other hand popular initiative and easy access to calling referendums also open for issues that the political elite would prefer to keep off the political agenda get on the agenda. So, more issues are politicised but less decisions passed.

2. There seems to be a relatively clear ethnic cleavage in the voting on the anti-minaret proposal: The French-speaking parts of Switzerland were less enthusiastic about banning minarets than the German-speaking parts. Now, if I remember correctly, this pattern was also seen in relation to UN membership, trade agreements with the EU and immigration policies in general. Geneva and St. Gallen may be in the same country, but they are very different places.

3. Democracy and individual rights are two different things: It is perfectly possible for a majority to vote against basic individual freedoms. Political theorists have been struggling with this issue since Locke.

4. As Norman Geras has pointed out, the campaign rests on the assumption that opposition to one form of unjustified discrimination (in particular the treatment of women in Muslim culture) is an acceptable argument to uphold another (discrimination of Muslims). But no matter how we twist or turn this, the calls for the banning of minarets and mosques (and even gender equality arguments) are proxies for a general anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment.

5. The campaign of the SVP is almost perfectly mirrored by a campaign by the Danish People’s Party to prevent the building of a mosque in Copenhagen. Note that DF also wants to use referendums as a means to block the building of mosques (which, rather than the minarets, is the real issue) – however the different constitutional rules makes the DF strategy much less likely to succeed.

6. A ban on minarets raises some intriguing judicial issues. If I’m correctly informed, Switzerland like Denmark does not have a constitutional court or (unlike Denmark) rules allowing for courts to repeal unconstitutional courts, so there will be an conflict between the freedom of religion and the proposed legislation. Then there is the issue about national legislation and the European Convention on Human Rights. For a discussion, look here). At this point we may also remember that parties like SVP and DF often hold a negative view of international law.

(This is a slightly different issue, but if we look at the UN system, I will just note that countries with a – to say the very least – questionable human rights record like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and China are represented in the UN Human Rights Council. Needless to say, this is a problem for the UN).

Oh, and as we all know, the Russians have been trying to invade Denmark since the 1880s.

Official statements by the Swiss federal council: 1, 2.

Due to Sarah Palin’s previous links with a Pentecostal church, Pew Research has some notes about the role of pentecostals in the U.S. and their general political positions (hint: Palin appears to be a fairly typical pentecostal on social issues).

One side-note from a Scandinavian perspective could be that Sweden has a fairly strong Pentecostal tradition (not least compared with Denmark) and one of the parties in the present government, the Christian Democrats, actually have some of their base in Swedish Pentecostalism – this sets the Swedes apart from the Norwegian and Danish Christian Democratic parties which have their base in more traditional evangelical and pietist communities, but then Pentecostalism is relatively much stronger in Sweden than in Denmark and Norway (Pentecostals are still a tiny minority, though). Sarah Palin might look less odd in a Swedish than in a Danish context.

One major problem for the Swedish party has been how to deal with the abortion issue – Swedish pentecostals (as most other evangelicals) are firmly opposed to free abortion, but the party at one point decided that the anti-abortion standpoint wasn’t a vote-winner and has generally silenced candidates who raised the issue.

I also note that the entry in the Swedish Wikipedia mentions that Göran Hägglund, the present chairman of the Swedish Christian Democrats, was trained as a Pentecostal preacher. Hägglund’s own homepage makes no mention of this. Another sign of the party’s complicated relationship with its own beginnings?

In the UK media a debate (to say the least) has been raging over comments made by the Archbishop of Canterbury about the role of Islamic sharia law in British society. This is the introduction to the Guardian’s original article:

The Archbishop of Canterbury tonight prompted criticism from across the political spectrum after he backed the introduction of sharia law in Britain and argued that adopting some of its aspects seemed “unavoidable”.

(The Times has the full text of the archbishop’s lecture* – and Language Log also weighs in on the wordings)

That the right-wing press loved to attack the archbishop was perhaps not that surprising (here’s the always-subtle The Sun “newspaper”, and if you’re looking for a more up-market treatment try the Telegraph or the Times) but the government and even media like the Guardian also gave the speech a distinctly frosty reception.

The Economist takes one step back and points to a central issue:

In any case, the reality to which the Archbishop was referring is palpable enough: there are already plenty of sub-cultures in Britain where people choose to regulate their behaviour, in matters like diet, marital status and inheritance, by a set of self-imposed norms which may differ quite sharply from the remainder of society.

The big question, for any secularist advocate of the rule of law, is whether people who participate in these sub-cultures really have a right to opt out, or to indeed to move from one cultural world to another.

The entitlement of sub-cultures to exist can easily become inimical to freedom if vulnerable individuals (such as women and children) are in effect trapped inside them because of massive pressure not to “betray” the community. The Archbishop would have drawn a much less hostile reaction if he had remembered to make that point more firmly.

And by the way: Here’s a prominent UK businessman talking about women’s role on the labour market – and here’s a report about how Microsoft’s German division treats female employees. If my choice was between the Brits and Microsoft, I know what I’d prefer.

PS: Xenophobic and outright stupid comments will be deleted.

Hey, I thought I was slow but I actually beat Danish media on the story! Berlingske, Politiken.

* As good scientists we should always go to the primary source so here is the official transcript of the lecture from the AoC’s homepage.

I’ll have to admit that I missed this point in the new government programme completely but the Danish National Church (which is a state church) is also the object of a number of political and administrative reforms.

Trying to describe the formal status of the church is a bit difficult, to say the least. The 1849 constitution included the promise of a separate framework for the church which, as you may have guessed, has never been fulfilled. This means that the church on the one hand is placed directly under the control of parliament and the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs. (Completely OT, but during my first year at university I was in the same class as the present permanent secretary of the MEA) Unlike the Church of England or the Church of Sweden, the DNC does not have anything like a Synod or a National Church Assembly. Similarly, the DNC does not have an archbishop but a number of ordinary bishops.

Before you get the impression that Denmark is some kind of Lutheran equivalent of Iran or Saudi-Arabia, you need to know that most of the day-to-day administrative business is run by local parish councils while the clergy preaches the gospel, baptizes the new-born, marries people and so on. (Actually, immigrants are usually spooked by the fact that they have to register births with the local church office, believing that the child is automatically entered as a member of the church) The MEA does its best to stay out of the way unless something really nasty (ie. a conflict between a parish council and the local vicar) happens.

Ideologically, the DNC is also split into a number of more or less formalised factions and movements like the Grundtvigians, the Inner Mission, Tidehverv and so on, which means that the Danish National Church as such does not have an opinion on a lot of religious matters.

Anyway, the new government programme (see page 60) promises us “more church for the money” which means spending less money on churches and churchyards – yes, the text actually says so – and more on what is called “service for church members”. In more practical terms, this means changing government grants from being specifically tied to positions to being determined by factors such as the size of respective congregations, church attendance etc.

Another interesting change has to do with the bishops’ conditions of appointment. As it is, bishops are elected by parish councilors and then appointed by the minister when a vacancy occurs – usually when the incumbent bishop reaches the age of 70 and is forced to resign due to age. Now, the government wants to change this so that bishops instead of being civil servants appointed for life will be appointed on a contract basis for a fixed number of years.

I’m still left with the question: How do you adequately measure and evaluate the efficiency of a church? Wouldn’t you need some kind of link to the guy upstairs to get information about the number of souls saved?

Crazy Bishops, Mozambique Edition. Sigh.

More Bishops. This one is in fact right about the children, but – well, you guess – about everything else.

The Roman Catholic Church never ceases to amaze…

My brain is still on stand-by so I will just post some links to some interesting stories related to current events.The Murder of Anna PolitkowskayaAnne Applebaum has this piece in Slate.Topics for discussion: Is it a coincidence that a) Politkovskya is mudered at a time when Russia is close to engaging in armed conflict with Georgia, b) that Vladimir Putin did not see the need to condemn or even comment the murder for several days and c) Putin when pressed for a comment declared that Politkovskya was an insignificant reporter?The Usual CrisisWhatever you may think about Sp!ked, the site has two articles about Western-Muslim relations which are worth reading:Mick Hume: End this Muslim-ManiaJosie Appleton: A veiled debate

If you read German, I would recommend Ulrich Speck’s latest post in Die Zeit’s Kosmoblog where he discusses the dangers emanating from islamist terrorists.It has become popular to compare islamism with fascism and nazism – giving us the concept islamofascism – and alarmist writers such as the Danish twosome Karen Jespersen and Ralf Pittelkow have adopted the perspective.Linking islamism and fascism of cause also has an added attraction: It gives authors and politicians the opportunity to paint everyone who do not readily accept the draconian anti-terrorism (and sometimes anti-Muslim) measures as Chamberlain-like appeasers.In any event – Speck is skeptical and points to some relatively obvious facts:

We are dealing with a terrorist threat, not a threat from a movement which has the control over real resources and which promises an alternative modernity that would be able to question the secular Liberal order in any fundamental way.

Without the support of Saudi Arabia, militant Islamism would be much weaker than it is at the moment and the comparison with Fascism is faulty because European Fascism in many ways embraced modernity.Update: See also Speck’s discussion of Justin Vaisse and Jonathan Laurence’s: Integrating Islam: Political and Religious Challenges in Contemporary France. Available at Amazon.

A final batch of polls to round off the week-end. On Sunday two polls addressing the relationship between Muslims and Western societies were released.Denmark: Relative OptimismThe Danish think tank “Mandag Morgen” released a poll which showed that 51% of Danes see no problems in combining Islam and democratic government.60% thought schools should put more effort into presenting and discussing non-Christian confessions to pupils and 75% said that the views presented by the imams who have been promiment during the cartoon crisis were not representative of the views held by Muslims living in Denmark.A short summary of the poll can be found on the homepage of Politiken.UK: PessimismMeanwhile, a poll presented by the conservative Sunday Times paited a bleaker picture of Muslim-European relations. 86% thought the protests against the Danish embassy were a gross overreaction and 80% that authorities show too much tolerance of Muslims who urge extreme acts. Asked whether a peaceful coexistence between Muslims and others in Britain was possible, 67% were negative and only 17% positive.It may be worth noting that the British poll was carried out in the week when extremist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri was sentenced to a long prison term for supporting terrorism.Unfortunately neither Politiken nor Sunday Times present any breakdown of poll data in their reports.