What does a minaret represent?
To most observers, minarets would appear as a simple religio-architectural symbol, having nothing to do with ‘political power’, opposed to what Erdogan and the Swiss voters would have us believe. But minarets have a political dimension, at least, from the viewpoint of its origin and history. After knocking out the world’s second-greatest power, Persia and capturing Central Asia and North Africa, the Umayyads—despite gaining considerable grounds in the Christian East and later in Spain—remained horn-locked in an impossible, and often disastrous, battle with Christian Byzantium as well as Christian Europe. For many centuries, the Christian world remained the enemy par excellence of Islam. Islam’s mission of global conquest, initiated by Muhammad, was persistently held back by Christian Europe, despite slowly losing grounds, before attaining supremacy over the Islamic Jihadis and beating them back, and even going on to capture most of the Islamic lands in the so-called Colonial Age. Only
