A Burkha is a piece of clothing.  No more.

A ban against it is both bigotred and poorly thought out...

and infact is against womens rights.

Most women's groups actually understand this...

Those that do not are thinking irrationally about the subject from a specifically western view.

Once again stof.  I ask you.  What does the Burkha Ban due?

In what way does it liberate women?

It doesn't.

All it does is subsitute tyrnanny from a small subset of those people who choose to wear a burka with the tyranny of the government telling the entire group that wants to wear it that they can't.  It replaces tyranny of what?  10% with 100% tyranny.

Because "the western government knows best."

You don't beat a Burkha via a ban, because Burkha isn't repressing women.  It's simply a sign of opression for SOME women.  It's like trying to solve a fire by creating materials that are flamable but don't produce smoke.  It fixes nothing and does nothing but cause more problems.

I am all for the Swiss vote.

Islam is an untolerant religion. In muslim countries your aren't allowed to build new churces, and it's because of islam. We are far more tolerant, but simply as a reaction against muslim intolerans, we must not allow any new mosques in the West.

Then of course this is about the minaret as a symbol, and it's a protest by European people against mass immigration into Europe, from Islamic countries in particular.

Except it's not that simple. Christians don't need church bell towers to practice their religion, but if church bell towers were banned the Christians would be outraged. You may be banning something that is not fundamental to their religion, but they would see it as a direct attack against them.

How can you say that, coming from a country where two famous people (van Gogh, Pim Forteyn) have been murdered for their political views on islam and immigration?

Geert Wilders is a hero.

i think they will see all the violence towards them in muslim countries as direct attacks.  im pretty sure they would be fine with no bells if it meant they could openly practice their religion.

The violence towards Christians (or westerners in general for that matter) in Muslim countries has nothing to do with the hypothetical banning of Church towers in their own country. The Christians would see the violence in Muslim countries as offensive, but not localised within their community. The banning of church towers in their own country would be different, that is localised.

They wouldn't be fine with the banning of church towers. They could still practice their religion openly, sure. But it would be an oppression to their religion locally by their own government.

You could say the exact same thing about Minarets in this case. Muslims, although not being the native religion in this case, still worship the religion as citizen of Switzerland. A ban on minarets would still be seen as a form of oppression against them from their own government. I would be pissed off if I was Swiss Muslim right now.

This is only one country in Europe... you can't generalise this case for the rest of Europe. It would be like saying that North America has a massive drug crime problem just because Mexico has.

All this tolerance and wussyness does no good whatsoever. It only teaches foreigners to become more arrogant and demanding. Give them something and they'll just demand more. And all of a sudden the natives are the oppressed miniority and the old culture is gone. History has shown this time and time and time again.

I can't understand how all you saints are unable to see it.

Err, where has history taught us this?

In Kosovo for example, slavs vs muslims. The Indians in S America vs the Spanish. Indians in N America vs the English. The Tutsis vs Hutus in Rwanda.