DH = Dead Husband?

Tom

DH - dental hygienist.

I'm not an expert in acronyms. My dentist is committed to offering good professional training to people who might experience discrimination otherwise (especially on the labour market), and they have more than half of the staff coming from different places.

I am on the no side basically because Switzerland already has too many laws.

One thing I agree with Trump; every new law proposal should cancel two existing ones.

I think you need to ask yourself why they have (or need) so many laws?

Do they have more than other countries or is just that people are more aware of them?

Typically from the same people who think all Swedish people work in banks where they make cuckoo clocks while eating meatballs.

I just tell them it must be Swaziland they are confusing it with.

I wish it were so but that's not the case. Typically, it's Americans who view the minerat ban as violation against human rights.

If the building of new minarets have been banned, but the building of church spires and clock towers, and temple and synagogue domes are not then there is clear bias against the Muslim community, however hard people to try to spin it to try and show that there isn't.

It would be interesting if a religious organisation wanted to build a new center with one of your listed building landmarks and were opposed due to religious bans, using minarets as an example.

Selective perception in the USA? If I were in an argumentative mood, I'd generally question American concern about human rights and specifically about those of Muslims being violated in Sweden/Switzerland/Swaziland.

I think the argumentative mood is optional, one can easily just be in an "amuse me" mood.

Not all of them are ignorant of politics abroad.

IMO this vote is an exercise in futility and a waste of money/effort. Apart from the e-ID, all have little or no impact on the population – whether they can vote or not.

What did catch my eye however, was multiple mention of the “fur bikini”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t curb my natural curiosity and searched for images. Now, visually scarred, I seek to protect innocent people from the trauma I experienced by proposing the Both-or-Nothing initiative: basically, fur bikinis are forbidden unless hidden by a burka. Naturally, details still have to be thrashed out – perhaps fur mankinis, should they really be a thing (no more google today), would be covered as well to make it gender inclusive.

Anyone willing to join the committee is welcome. Regarding wording of the initiative, a quorum mechanism is foreseen to diminish the influence of the Nothing fraction. By signing up early, this tedious detail in the statutes can still be eliminated.

I'd question whether they even specifically understand what the minaret ban was about or how it came to be.

You did amuse me!

So, gender inclusive fur mankini? Just make sure you cover the gender well, to come back to the modesty reason that the burka ban initiative says to question.

Never mentioned political ignorance of (informed) Americans - but concern of human rights in combination with religious questions by anyone tends to raise my hackles.

Bring up slavery, native-american genocide, etc.

That should shut them up!

Tom

Quite a big guns counterpoint against a pretty insignificant building law restriction. Voted against at the time. Mainly because I appreciate classic Moslem architecture.

Also doubt they’ll shut up anyway

If you want to talk building and urban zoning laws, remind them that in many parts of the US you're not allowed to grow vegetables in your front garden. You know, something that's green and that you can eat and has lots of good reasons going for it. Whereas a minaret is just an oddly shaped roof.

Something else than goes on a pizza? What?

It's not the roof that matters. If people refused the minarets here, why shouldn't they have the right to refuse other stuff. Maybe the same way little kids walk to school, some people here want to exercise independence from foreign issues. Even if now they concern only 30 women.

The minaret thing was a kickback against a high court ruling saying religious freedom overruled urban planning regulations and meant religious communities could dispense with proper planning and permitting procedures. I don't think that sort of argument would fly in the US, so Americans criticizing Switzerland over it really have no leg to stand on. Many in Switzerland thought the court's decision was misguided if not absurd, and hence passed the initiative to put that right. The peculiar thing is that that the constitutional amendment never defined what exactly a minaret is. So if anybody wants to go that way, they would have to have a court work it out for them.

The face covering ban is much more precise in what it wants to ban and what it doesn't.

When I see some chauffeur driven Mercedes pull up in front of a fashion store on Bahnhofstrasse, a bunch of bodyguards push onlookers aside so some Saudi princess can spend more money in three minutes than some of earn in three months. I sort of have difficult following the argument that her life is guided by modesty.