Retreating or Reviving !

Last night me and one of my friend was talking about banning of Minarets in Switzerland.

He told me that he didn't get offended by this banning...hmm..let see what Minaret remind us :

A minaret is a tower that adjoins a mosque. The original purpose of a minaret was to allow a muezzin to call people to prayer in that neighborhood.

Some minarets are still functional in that regard although, with the use of public address systems, loud speakers today are frequently attached to the minaret instead. Most mosques have only one minaret, many of which are placed in the direction of the qibla, which shows the direction in which Muslims pray (toward the city of Makkah).

However, some mosques may have more than one minaret. Minarets are also somewhat like church steeples in that people can tell from a distance which building is the mosque.

He confirmed his statement by telling me that the earliest mosques were built without minarets, hadiths relay that the Muslim community of Madina gave the call to prayer from the roof of the house of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), which doubled as a place for prayer.

Around 80 years after Muhammad's death the first known minarets appeared.

He thinks that he don't need a MINARET to remind him of his being a Muslim.

1990, the Muslim population was 152,200, or 2.2% of the Switzerland’s resident population. A surprising development for those who know that in the early seventies, there were less than 20,000 Muslims living in Switzerland. Islam is now the second largest religion in Switzerland, after Christianity.

He got a valid point but being a second largest nation of a Switzerland, does this gives a positive sign if you are prohibited to exhibit your culture and tradition?

I know...people would say let it go. We don't need a minaret to be a Muslim we have so much enthusiasm for our religion and we will stick with it. But still when religion is a personal adoption, its human nature to be totally IN that adoption. Otherwise you will feel like fish out of water.

I mean how it would be like in Switzerland when it about adhan time and we cant hear it as it is banned? Isn't this will gives a little void feeling...? Like something is missing ??

But than I also discovered that there are only four total minaret exist in Switzerland even before it was banned publicly, it was not welcomed either.

According to the government, there are 130-160 Muslim cultural centres and prayer rooms in Switzerland, and four mosques with minarets:-
The Mahmud mosque in Zurich, inaugurated in 1963.-
The Petit-Saconnex mosque and Islamic cultural foundation in Geneva, opened in 1978.-
The Albanian Islamic cultural centre mosque in Winterthur, opened in 2004.-
The mosque of the Turkish cultural association in Wangen near Olten, inaugurated in 2009.

Why Pakistan felt the most about this banning is because in the inauguration ceremony of Mahmud mosque the high society turned out , including the former Pakistani foreign minister Zaffrullah Khan and mayor of Zurich Emil Landolt.

Which means that we are attached with Switzerland mosques and Muslims since than.

I don't know whether accepting the Switzerland's banning of Minaret is our retreating from culture and tradition or reviving that there were no minaret at the start of Islam so its not something on which ISLAM depends.