Demonstrating the brilliance of direct democracy, the Swiss people declared their nation to be a minaret-free zone. One cannot help but admire the simplicity of Swiss thinking. They did not bother with definitions or rationales. There was no legal gobbledygook, no extended rationales, no conscience-driven caveats. They simply voted to amend their constitution with the inspirational words, "The building of minarets is prohibited."

True, it might have been more fitting to insert the words into Article 15: Freedom of Faith and Conscience rather than Article 72: Church and State, but that's a quibble. The important thing is that there will be no more dangerous minarets in Switzerland.

The amendment came not a moment too soon. Switzerland already has four minarets, and if the voters had not put a stop to it, Zurich and Geneva might soon resemble this chilling scene:



If you watch to the end, you will see monstrous golden minarets overwhelm a beautiful if somewhat colorless Swiss town, towering over the church towers and even the Alps. The minarets are manned by bearded Shriners in green and red who march around and hold out their arms as if to say, "Please don't shoot me!" These Shriners pose a constant threat of toppling off the unfenced platforms onto innocent Swiss citizens below.

In addition to the danger of falling Shriners, the phallic minarets also menace Swiss women. Swiss feminist Julia Onken explained, "Mosques are male houses, minarets are male power symbols." Muslims should invent a new architectural structure that resembles a vagina.

Swiss housewife Julia Werner feared the dreaded slippery slope of the minaret offensive: "If we give them a minaret, they'll have us all wearing burqas. Before you know it, we'll have sharia law and women being stoned to death in our streets. We won't be Swiss any more."

The concern for women's rights is deeply embedded in Swiss culture. Swiss women gained the right to vote as early as 1971, a year before Bangladesh and only 24 years after Pakistan.

While some foreigners have accused the Swiss of intolerance, the good Swiss people don't have anything against Muslims.

"We don't have anything against Muslims," said parliament member Oskar Freysinger of the Swiss People's Party (SVP), "But we don't want minarets. The minaret is a symbol of a political and aggressive Islam, it's a symbol of Islamic law. The minute you have minarets in Europe it means Islam will have taken over."

But the SVP does not extend its generosity to sheep. Some animals just do not belong in this famously tolerant alpine nation.