Pagoda-style minaret: Tongxin Mosque in Ningxia, China

A shack-mosque in Nouadhibou, Mauritania. The 'minaret' is a wooden pole with a louspeaker

A Geneva-based website has come up with the most sensible response yet to the Swiss "minaret crisis": do-it-yourself minarets that anyone can construct without permission.

"Standing more than 50cm tall, this cardboard minaret is easily erected and will disseminate its positive aura in the office or on your balcony," the wesbsite says. "Feel free to download, print, cut, fold and paste your apartment's own minaret." So there!

The Swiss, of course, are not the first to try to ban minarets. The early Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia did so too, on the grounds that they were bida' (an innovation). Historically speaking, the Wahhabis were right about that. The earliest mosques had no minarets and they did not start to appear until about 80 years after the Prophet's death, providing a high point from which to announce the call to prayer. 

Though the Swiss vote against minarets obviously reflects local xenophobia and Islamophobia, Taj Hargey of the Muslim Educational Centre in Oxford argues that Muslims "should not embrace a victim mentality" over it but should seize it as an opportunity for some positive thinking:

European mosques should stop mindlessly mimicking Eastern design and create prayer halls that blend into the landscape.

Muslims who have settled in Switzerland (and elsewhere in Europe) should not confuse culture with creed. To become integrated into their surroundings, they must relinquish the cultural baggage of their ancestral homelands. They should practice a Swiss Islam that is rooted in the society in which they live.

Stand by for the first yodelling imams.