Our friend Noah Marcel Sudarsky, former New York correspondent for the largest circulation French newspaper, has written us his thoughts about the Swiss minaret ban. Sudarsky grew up in France, Switzerland, and New York. He is a freelance writer and correspondent now living in the Bay Area. His articles and reviews have appeared in The NY Press, The Village Voice, The Onion, New York magazine, Salon.com, Citimag, Publisher’s Weekly, The New York Times, and other publications.

While interpretations concerning the Swiss referendum banning the construction of minarets will occupy pundits for a while, the recent vote has already given an undeniable boost to the European far right. Cast as a decision to impede the further development of Islamic extremism, the ban actually accomplishes only one thing: to further marginalize Muslims in a conservative Western European bastion which, historically at least, was a center of Enlightenment thought. Christian reformers made Switzerland their home, but also progressive thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when his universalist doctrines founded on the principle of inalienable human rights forced him to flee pre-revolutionary France or face execution.