Switzerland to ban minarets
Switzerland has backed far-right calls to ban the building of new minarets, official referendum results have revealed.
Switzerland’s biggest party, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), claims the turrets attached to mosques are symbols of militant Islam.
The anti-immigration SVP party believes the spires from where followers of Islam are called to prayer demonstrate a “political-religious claim to power”.
It forced a referendum on whether or not minarets should be banned after collecting 100,000 signatures from eligible voters within 18 months.
Over 57% of Swiss voters chose to approve a blanket ban on the construction of Muslim minarets, according to official results posted by Swiss news agency ATS.
Just days before the election only 37% of people polled by state-owned television station DRS said they would support the ban.
At the centre of the campaign was a controversial poster showing a woman in a burqa with missile-shaped minarets behind her.
Partial results from the poll indicate the German-speaking region of Lucerne accepted the ban, while French-speaking areas Geneva and Vaud voted against.
The Swiss government had urged people to vote against the ban, arguing it will cause “incomprehension overseas and harm Switzerland’s image”.
Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz made a video broadcast to the nation, which said: “Muslims should be able to practise their religion and have access to minarets in Switzerland too. But the call of the muezzin will not sound here.”
The right-wing proposal has stirred fears of violent reactions in Muslim countries and an economically disastrous boycott by wealthy Muslims who bank, shop and spend holidays in Switzerland.
Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Zurich, said: “The initiators have achieved something everyone wanted to prevent, and that is to influence and change the relations to Muslims and their social integration in a negative way.”
Mr Hatipoglu said if in the long term the anti-Islam atmosphere continues “Muslims indeed will not feel safe anymore”.
Islam is the second largest religion in the country after Christianity, with 400,000 followers within the 7.5 million population.
Religious groups, including Christians, Jews and Muslims, have come out in a rare show of unity against the proposal.
Four minarets have already been built in Switzerland but they will not be affected by the vote.
Thirty minutes after the referendum finished at midday, Swiss television reported: “The initiative would appear to be accepted. There is a positive trend. It’s a huge surprise.”
According to the respected gfs.bern polling institute an estimated 59 per cent of voters backed the ban. A majority of cantons were also in support of the initiative.
“A majority have voted for a nationwide ban on the construction of minarets,” said the institute’s director Claude Longchamp, speaking on Swiss Radio DRS.
For the Swiss constitution to be changed, the majority of the electorate and a majority of the cantons are required to vote ‘yes’.
A survey two weeks ago showed 53 per cent said they would reject it. Both the government and parliament had rejected the initiative.
Commentators had said the country risked international pariah status and a backlash across the Muslim world if a ’yes’ vote was achieved.
If the exit polls prove correct it will be a huge shock and Switzerland risks international pariah status and a backlash across the Muslim world.
Sunday’s vote was forced by members of the far-right Swiss People’s party (SVP) which has provoked a national debate over immigration with powerful billboard images.
The stark “stop” posters depicting a Muslim woman in a burka against the backdrop of a Swiss flag studded with missile shaped black minarets have been banned in many towns.
Hanspeter Rentsch, an executive director at the watch company Swatch, has warned that the referendum, and the poster propaganda, could damage Switzerland in the eyes of the world.
“The ‘Swiss’ brand must continue to represent values such as openness, pluralism and freedom of religion. Under no circumstances must it be connected with hatred, animosity towards foreigners and narrow-mindedness,” he said.
Campaigners demanded the referendum to halt “political Islamisation” by amending the Swiss constitution to add a clause stating “the construction of minarets is prohibited”.
Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the Swiss justice minister, has suggested that a vote for a ban could fuel Islamist radicalism and violent protests, such as those that greeted Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.
“This is not an appropriate instrument for combating religious extremism. It risks the opposite, of serving the cause of fanatics,” she said.
But Oskar Freysinger, an SVP MP, compares warnings of anger in the Muslim world to the arguments used by “appeasers” of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
“It is what Chamberlain thought in Munich in 1938. If these are the consequences, it is the proof that what we are doing to defend ourselves is legitimate,” he said.
The vote is required because campaigners got over 100,000 signatures on a petition against minarets triggering a vote under the Swiss constitution.
The campaign followed a row over a minaret in the tiny town of Langenthal, in the Bern canton of Switzerland.
Earlier this year Langenthal’s 750 Muslims asked for planning permission to add a minaret, 30 feet high, to their mosque in a town with 11 churches and 14,500 inhabitants.
The reaction to the apparently harmless request has polarised Switzerland and crossed borders to feed into British, French, Dutch and Austrian fears over Islam and national identity.
“This minaret is a symbol of conquest and power which marks the will to introduce Sharia law as has happened in some other European cities. We will not accept that,” said Ulrich Schueler, an SVP politician and leader of the “stop” minaret campaign.
Muslims have rejected the argument that a minaret symbolises Muslim power. Mutalip Karaademi, leader of Langenthal’s Muslim community and of Albanian origin, accused Mr Schueler of telling “dirty lies”.
“A minaret is a symbol nothing more. It s nice to see a house of god with a minaret or a church steeple or cupolas on a synagogue,” he said.
“They call us terrorists. They call us Taliban, so many labels all wrong. They insult us. We love this country, almost more than our own. Our children were born here.”
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looks to be a big psyop..however,i think they fear the minarets will tower over the towns as they are the tallest structure in small towns and can look like a missile, they claim..maybe we should investigate the history and symbology of minarets?
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hi seeker please research the history and symbolism of the minarets.
I am not sure but I think the minaret has to be on the highest point in a town or it must be taller than any other worship structure. I think but can be wrong that it confirms then the political and religious claiming of that territory. Just weird that Islamic countries are intolerant to any other religious presence -yet total tolerance is demanded from the non-islamic countries. We live in a strange world indeed!
heres a few bits:
In some of the oldest mosques, such as the Great Mosque of Damascus, minarets originally served as illuminated watchtowers (hence the derivation of the word from the Arabic nur, meaning “light”).
Minarets have been described as the “gate from heaven and earth”, and as the Arabic language letter alif (which is a straight vertical line)
very strange world
Pretty sure minarets in Switzerland, at least in the cities are not going to be the tallest structures – what about skyscrapers etc. Why specifically ban minarets – if you’re just worried about tall structures in small towns, why not just ban all new buildings over a certain height? Yes, Islamic countries are intolerent of many things. In Western countries though it makes little sense to discriminate against certain types of architecture. The people of Switzerland can decide what they want but to me it just seems like silly little political games by the SVP.
yeah i agree al-husayn..as i said..i think its a psyop