Making any kind of comment on the Swiss vote to ban the construction of minarets seems to involve re-stating the obvious in one way or another, and yet it's hard not to.

So my comment is this: clocks is the next thing that the Swiss should ban.

Here's an opening passage from Kenneth Cragg's The Call of the Minaret (1956; quote from the 2000 third edition) - a re-statement of the obvious, of course:

The clock is an important item in the mosque. The muezzin must be punctual in announcing the call to prayer. His timepiece marks the points for Salāt, "prayer," between dawn and sunset. [...]

And here's a little excerpt on the history of the minarets, from Robert Irwin's Islamic Art (1997; pp. 63-64):

Minarets may now be seen as entirely characteristic of Muslim religious architecture, but the very first mosques had none. The call to prayer was customarily made from the roof of the mosque itself. Equally, while it is now widely taken for granted that the purpose of a minaret is to provide the muezzin, who gives the five daily calls to prayer, with an elevated platform from which to make them, it is not so clear that this was its original purpose. The word minaret is related to nur, the word for light, and it is possible that not only was the form of the minaret influenced by that of the ancient Pharos or Lighthouse of Alexandria, but also that many of the early minarets were not designed as places for making the call to prayer. Indeed, some were not attached to mosques at all [...]. Rather, they seem in some cases at least to have functioned as lighthouses, guiding travellers across both seas and deserts. Others served as watchtowers, and still others were put up as monuments to commemorate Muslim victories.

The earliest minaret attached to a mosque was allegedly put up at Basra in southern Iraq in the 660s, though it has not survived. Early mosques had only one minaret [...] - if any - but over the centuries there was a slow proliferation in their number. These additional minarets had a decorative rather than a functional purpose; in later centuries as minarets increased in height nad became more slender, they were to all intents and purposes useless as places from which to make the call to prayer. Since the minaret was unknown in the lifetime of the Prophet, some strict Muslims denounced (and continue to denounce) minarets as ostentatious and unnecessary innovations. [...]"

Finally, here's a passage on Don Quixote's well-known Adventure of the Windmills (1605; Part 1, Chapter 8):

[...] At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that there are on plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire, "Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.

"Those thou seest there," answered his master, "with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long."

"Look, your worship," said Sancho; "what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go."

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that thou art not used to this business of adventures; those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."

So saying, he gave the spur to his steed Rocinante, heedless of the cries his squire Sancho sent after him, warning him that most certainly they were windmills and not giants he was going to attack. He, however, was so positive they were giants that he neither heard the cries of Sancho, nor perceived, near as he was, what they were, but made at them shouting, "Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you." [...]