The following excerpts from an interview with Oskar Freysinger, one of the leaders of the Swiss People’s Party, were originally published at the Right World news site in a slightly different form.
Oskar Freysinger: it’s time for the legal state to confine Islam’s religious dogmas within the appropriate framework
Interview by the Modus Agendi editor-in-chief Ilya Goryachev with Oskar Freysinger, one of the Swiss People’s Party leaders.
Ilya Goryachev: Could you please tell us about yourself, your party and its activity in Switzerland?
Oskar Freysinger: I’m a vice-president of the Swiss People’s Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei) and the president of its branch in Vale canton. Our party fights for the independence, neutrality and sovereignty of Switzerland. Equally, we stand for the controlled immigration policy, as well as for the diminishing of public expenditure and for limited state interference into private affairs. The independent, responsible and free citizen is of top priority for us. We don’t want statism nor for citizens to live at the expense of the state. As for my private life, I’ve been happily married for 25 years, I’ve got three children (aged 22, 20 and 17). By profession, I’ve been a teacher of German literature for 27 years in one of Sitten’s high schools. I speak fluently two languages: German and French, and also English and Italian. Besides, I’ve written many books in German and French — novels, stories, plays and poetic works. Five out of my books were translated into Serbian. Moreover, I’m a member of the Writers’ Association of Serbia. In one of my novels titled “Chess spiral” the action takes place at the time of the Russian revolution, and this work was translated into Russian. At present, I’m searching for a publisher in Russia.
IG: What is your opinion about the EU? In your point of view, what is the future of the EU? Many politicians — SVP members — predict its collapse, contrary to the left-wing representatives claiming that Switzerland would benefit from entering the EU and that rejecting it would mean isolation of Switzerland.
OF: The EU is a structure imposed on the nations by technocrats from above, and, in my opinion, this structure sooner or later will crash down. The citizens less and less identify themselves with that bureaucratic antidemocratic and centralist monster. Entering the EU would be an organizational, economic and financial catastrophe for Switzerland. In this case, only the tax of added value would increase from 8% to 20%, and we would be converted into cash payers of the debts of the bankrupt southern European states. Moreover, it would put an end to direct democracy and federalism — these two principal pillars of Switzerland. Without them, our state would inevitable tumble down. Switzerland should establish multilateral ties instead of one-way orientation mainly on the EU. It has many possibilities to set up relations with Russia, South Eastern Asia, South America etc. All these are promising, fast-developing markets, with which we should establish closer economic relations.
IG: During the last 20 years, in the Balkans wars — in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia — the EU and the USA have devotedly sided with Muslims. In your opinion, was such policy beneficial or harmful for Europe?
OF: Developments going on in the Balkans, especially the creation of the first Muslim state on European soil, are a catastrophe. It happened just because Americans are permanently strategically interested in preserving their Bondstill military base and place their geopolitical interests above international law. The USA are playing a dangerous game with their Saudi allies. Due to the dollar dependence on oil, they are dominating all financial markets worldwide. As a result, Islam is spreading further and further, though Americans are pretending that they fight it in Iraq and Afghanistan. Actually, that suits fundamentalists. The situation is getting more complicated by the fact that for the last years Kosovo has become a hub for drug traffic, prostitution and weapons trade. This country is entirely in the power of mafia clans. Rule of law is just a screen, the last Serbs are being gradually expelled from Kosovo.
IG: What is your personal opinion about Islam? How well do you know this religion?
OF: Islam is something bigger than just a religion. Islamic religious texts have not only a general moral and ethical character, but often claim an all-round participation in state’s formation. The Koran appeared in a written form after the year 800, in the course of wars of conquest, it reached Spain so that it became crucial to create a legislative code of rules and laws necessary for unification of different clans and tribal organizations, previously called Saracens, not Muslims. Moreover, mosques could hardly be compared with our churches, what is often realized by our departments of civil property register, since it’s there where juridical and civil procedures are mainly conducted. The privileged access of a Muslim to Allah goes through Shariah law. Islamic norms. In Islam morality is based on the law, whereas according to our juridical interpretations, it’s quite the opposite — the law is based on morality. In Islam morality is based on legislative norm, that is secondary to the law that, from the point of view of Islam is logical, since the law is considered to be of divine origin, non-created and granted once and forever. When quoting the Koran, a Muslim quotes the text to a certain extent close to our state laws, but contrary to them, Koran laws have a divine origin and therefore are unchangeable. That’s why it’s not surprising that a Muslim who has abandoned Islam is threatened with death, and that 94% of all sins, for which Koran imposes sufferings in hell as a punishment, are related to doubts in the truthfulness of Mohammed’s teaching and Islam, as well as to criticism addressed to them. It’s dramatically varying ideas of the law’s origin that indicate in fact how difficult it is to bring into practice co-existence of these two worldviews.
IG: For what reasons did you stand against the construction of minarets? For example, in London there are about 400 mosques, aren’t there?
OF: It’s time for the legal state to confine Islam’s religious dogmas within the appropriate framework. There is a freedom of religion in Switzerland, but it is only so until maintaining religious freedom doesn’t contradict the norms of the rule of law. Since Islam doesn’t distinguish between the state and religion, such problems inevitably arise. However, the state governed by the rule of law is obliged to care about peaceful co-existence of religions and prevent the domination of one of them. The referendum against the construction of minarets was a sort of signal to the state: here is the limit. According to Erdogan (Turkish prime minister), the minaret is a symbol of the religious power (“Islamic bayonet”), therefore it was a ban on minarets’ construction that was the most suitable way to put an end to Islamization.
IG: How do you see the future of Christian Europe?
OF: If we continue to preach relativism (relativity of values) and the decay of values goes on, Christianity will inevitably become a complete nonentity. However, since people can’t do without believing in something, on the one hand, it will cause the flourishing of all kinds of sects, but on the other — Islam will be spreading more irrepressibly.
IG: Let’s move to the Middle East conflict between Israel and Palestine, what is your attitude towards this conflict?
OF: I assert that Israel is the only state governed by the rule of law in the Middle East, and is surrounded on all sides by absolutely authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Unfortunately, the demographic process in Israel itself is going not in favour of the Jewish population. I don’t know whether this state will be able to resist for a long period of time a surrounding it hatred and demographic imbalance.
[…]
Translated from German into Russian by Wolfgang Akunov
Read the rest at the Right World news site.
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