My Hero

Guillaume Morand is my hero.

It seems that on Nov 29 of this year 57% of the brave voters of Switzerland voted to ban the building of minarets in their country. At first I thought, well Switzerland, a progressive nation that granted women the right to vote in 1971. Switzerland, a valiant nation that turned away tens of thousands of civilian Jewish refugees during World War II. Switzerland, a noble nation that finally reached a settlement with survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants to allow access to dormant accounts in Swiss banks in 2000.

My favorite aspect of the efforts of the Swiss banks to deny the heirs of victims of the Holocaust access to their family bank accounts is the banks’ request for death certificates. I understand about Teutonic efficiency, but I have trouble imagining guards stacking up death certificates next to bodies at Auschwitz or Treblinka. Evidently the Swiss had no such trouble.

In an interesting sidebar, banning the construction of minarets was too much for even the Vatican. The Vatican! Yes the Vatican issued a strong and unequivocal statement condemning the Swiss vote.

There is, however, much support around the world for the Swiss position. There are people who oppose construction of entire mosques in cities throughout Europe and North America. Some of these, I regret to say, are people of my acquaintance who have patiently explained to me that the construction of mosques in European and North American cities is a threat to “western values.” Western values like religious pluralism? Or, these same people posit, why should we allow mosques in our cities when Islamist states like Iran and Saudi Arabia won’t allow the construction of churches and synagogues? To which I respond so these “western values” demand that we embrace the lowest standards of the most repressive dictatorial states as our own? Rousseau and Jefferson would be so proud.

The hate-o-sphere is currently a-flame about an even more heinous affront to “western values” being perpetrated by a group of Muslims right here in the good ole U. S. of A. Those shameless Islamists are building a mosque and cultural center in a former Burlington Coat Factory two blocks from Ground Zero. I can only assume that the haters are in such a lather because they don’t know where else to go for discount outerwear in lower Manhattan.

I cannot imagine a more powerful and appropriate gesture of reconciliation and healing. Placing that facility on that site makes the clear and necessary statement that the monstrous thugs who perpetrated the attack on the World Trade Center no more represented the teaching or values of Islam than the Real IRA members responsible for the Omagh bombing represented the teaching or values of Roman Catholicism. A mosque two blocks from Ground Zero expresses simply and succinctly the highest aspirations of universal human values.

My hero, Guillaume Morand, exemplifies the highest standard of universal human values, individual division. M. Morand owns a chain of shoe stores in Bussigny, Switzerland. When his fellow citizens voted to ban the construction of minarets, M. Morand, who is not himself a Muslim, built a minaret over one of his warehouses in protest of the vote.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burke

M. Morand is a good man. M. Morand saw evil and did something. M. Morand is my hero.