The Laws of Foreign Buildings: Flat Roofs and Minarets - Michael ...

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14 Social & Legal Studies 000(00) Figure 6. The mosque of Wangen with the new Minaret, added in January 2009. (Copyright: public domain, taken from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moschee_Wangen_bei_Olten.jpg) of veiled women seen from behind. The authors of the initiative write in the accompanying text, ‘we have to stop the spread of Islam. A ban of minarets is necessary’. But they also add: ‘The minaret as a building has no religious character. It is not mentioned in the Koran or in other holy scriptures of Islam’ (Gegen den Bau von Minaretten, 2008). Thus, the ban of minarets would not contradict the freedom of religion in Switzerland. 9 Rather, they argue, that the minaret is a sign of a ‘religious-political claim to power’, using religious freedom to fight the equality of citizens and thus contradicting the equality of humankind granted by the law. On 8 July 2008 the initiative was submitted with 114,895 signatures to the federal office. On 29 November 2009 the initiative was accepted with 57 per cent of the votes. The case shows the difficulty of defining and identifying a building type. Throughout the conflict a constant shift between use-type and form-type is at play and also changes in identifying these types by reference to different parts of a building.[B1] Roland Kissling and the town authorities first assume that the use of the factory building as a prayer space does not constitute a change of use, since they explicitly allowed it, when they allowed the use of the factory building to be used as a cultural centre. So far their argument is strictly technological. Mere use is no change, only if it is linked to a material change. Only the addition of a minaret turns a factory used as a cultural centre with a prayer space into a mosque, thus changing the building type. 14
Guggenheim 15 For the Muslim community and also for the Cantonal court, the building type is defined by its use. The factory building is already a mosque even before a minaret is added. Their position is strictly socializing the building. The minaret itself is only ‘symbolic’ because it cannot be used to call for prayer. The minaret does not define the building type hence they materialize it. In a second step, the campaign to ban minarets follows this materializing move, by acknowledging that the minaret is only symbolic and does not define the building type, which is exactly the reason why the initiative supposedly does not violate religious freedom. For the committee, the minaret has been represented as a political symbol for the anti-democratic tendencies of Islam, and is not necessary for the exercise of Islamic religion. The initiative, if passed, would not stop the building of mosques defined as prayer spaces without minarets. It would prove that minarets are not technological requirements for the religious use of the building. But then the webpage also states that the spread of Islam should be stopped with the help of the initiative. This implicitly assumes that if mosques did not have minarets they would be less useful in spreading the message of Islam. Thereby they mediatize the minaret, not with reference to religion, but to politics. If we ask whether the law prohibits the immigration of building types, an irritating answer emerges: the initiative has been passed, but Switzerland will most likely not prevent the immigration of the mosque as a building type, if it is defined as a use-type. Rather, a new form of mosque without minarets will emerge and become stabilized. The banning of minarets might probably also trigger new legal battles about which building forms count as minarets, since they are not defined in the initiative. Immediately after the initiative was accepted, several ‘minarets’ were built, for example on balconies or in gardens, to provoke this question. Some graphic designers even marketed a sheet of construction paper to ‘build your own minaret’ – ‘without building permit’ (Dirtyhands, 2009). If a church were to be turned into a mosque – which has never happened so far in Switzerland – the question could arise whether the church tower is now a minaret and would have to be taken down. As the debate about the ‘symbolic’ minaret in Wangen shows, a ‘chimney’ can be a symbolic minaret, even if it is not used as minaret. Conclusion: A Comparison The two cases present a complex picture of how the law relates to ‘foreign’ forms. As a summary, I compare the cases with respect to the different architectural theories employed in the controversies by the opponents and proponents of foreign building types. As it turns out, the question of what makes a building foreign and how it connects to foreign lifestyles has been answered quite differently, and even in opposite ways, in both of the two cases. In both cases, it is fundamental that the architectural theories that shall prove whether a building is foreign or not are never spelled out, let alone explicitly discussed. Instead, proponents and opponents alike adhere to the theory that fits their case, and even endorse other theories depending on their needs. In the case of modern architecture, the development starts with the opponents, in this case the local authorities, which imply a mediatization of modern architecture. For them, the dispute revolves around how styles relate to the local. The importers of modern architecture answer with a technological theory. For them, it is not about the link of styles to 15
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