Thread: Switzerland Approves Ban on Minarets

Switzerland Approves Ban on Minarets

Sunday, November 29, 2009 10:32 AM

GENEVA – Over 57 percent of Swiss voters on Sunday approved a blanket ban on the construction of Muslim minarets, according to official results posted by Swiss news agency ATS.

A final tally of 26 cantons indicates that 57.5 percent of the population have voted in favour of the ban on minarets -- the turrets or towers attached on mosques from where Muslims are called to prayer.

Only four cantons rejected the proposal brought by Switzerland's biggest party -- the Swiss People's Party (SVP), which claims that minarets symbolise a "political-religious claim to power."

The SVP had forced a referendum under Swiss regulations on the issue after collecting 100,000 signatures within 18 months from eligible voters.

The Swiss government was firmly against the call, arguing that accepting a ban would bring about "incomprehension overseas and harm Switzerland's image."

Switzerland has an uneasy relationship with its Muslim population of some 400,000 in a country of 7.5 million people. Islam is the second largest religion here after Christianity.

http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/switze ... 91789.html

Name someplace that has an EASY relationship with people brought up to kill you?
I admire Switzerland, France, and Australia's stance they have taken to the Muslim crap.

I admire these countries for standing up for their people and country.

Poll question within source article

Ban on Minarets Likely in Switzerland

Vote Projection Suggests New Rule Passed by Wide Margin

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, AP
posted: 3 HOURS 6 MINUTES AGO

GENEVA (Nov. 27) -- Swiss voters approved a move to ban the construction of minarets in a Sunday vote on a right-wing initiative that labeled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a widely respected polling institute showed.

The projections based on partial returns say Swiss swung from only 37 percent supporting the proposal a week ago to 59 percent in the actual voting.


Salvatore Di Nolfi, Keystone / AP
Campaign posters from a right-wing Swiss party depict minarets as missiles.


Claude Longchamp, leader of the widely respected gfs.bern polling institute, said the projection contracted by state-owned DRS television forecasts approval of the initiative by more than half the country's 26 cantons, meaning it will become a constitutional amendment.

The nationalist Swiss People's Party describes minarets, the distinctive spires used in most countries for calls to prayer, as symbols of rising Muslim political and religious power that could eventually turn Switzerland into an Islamic nation.

Muslims make up about 6 percent of Switzerland's 7.5 million people. Many Swiss Muslims are refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Fewer than 13 percent practice their religion, the government says, and Swiss mosques do not broadcast the call to prayer outside their buildings.

"Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure — we don't have that in Switzerland, and we do not want to introduce it" said Ulrich Schlueer, co-president of the Initiative Committee to ban minarets.

The move by the People's Party, the country's largest party in terms of popular support and membership in parliament, is part of a broader European backlash against a growing Muslim population. It has stirred fears of violent reactions in Muslim countries and an economically disastrous boycott by wealthy Muslims who bank, shop and vacation in Switzerland.

Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organizations 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."

Hatipoglu said if in the long term the anti-Islam atmosphere continues, "Muslims indeed will not feel safe anymore."

The seven-member Cabinet that heads the Swiss government has spoken out strongly against the initiative, and local officials and rights defenders objected to campaign posters showing minarets rising like missiles from the Swiss flag next to a fully veiled woman.

The People's Party has campaigned mainly unsuccessfully in previous years against immigrants with campaign posters showing white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag and another with brown hands grabbing eagerly for Swiss passports.

The four minarets already attached to mosques in the country are not affected by the initiative.

Geneva's main mosque was vandalized Thursday when someone threw a pot of pink paint at the entrance. Earlier this month, a vehicle with a loudspeaker drove through the area imitating a muezzin's call to prayer, and vandals damaged a mosaic when they threw cobblestones at the building.

2009-11-29 07:49:19

http://news.aol.com/article/swiss-vote- ... ets/788109

There is nothing more irritating that the minarets starting prayer call before dawn, especially when you want to get some more sleep. Happy the Swiss have done this--as these days there are more silent ways to accomplish this prayer call--like calling the people's phones instead of screaming loudly across the city.

Good thing I checked on here,for I was going to post this story myself. I was happy to hear they stood against the building of the minarets. Maybe the Muslims will get pushed out as well. Just my thoughts!

That pleases me very much. The first thing I thought of is what would the USA do if these things cropped up all over the place?

Originally Posted by vortex

There is nothing more irritating that the minarets starting prayer call before dawn, especially when you want to get some more sleep. Happy the Swiss have done this--as these days there are more silent ways to accomplish this prayer call--like calling the people's phones instead of screaming loudly across the city.

Can't America control this "prayer call" under the noise pollution Law?

Originally Posted by ShockedinCalifornia

That pleases me very much. The first thing I thought of is what would the USA do if these things cropped up all over the place?

The IDIOTS we have in there now would be VERY pleased!
The Head of the Muslim take-over of America is OBAMA!

Foreign, Domestic Anger at Swiss Minaret Ban

Monday, November 30, 2009 10:36 AM

GENEVA -- A top Swiss official said Monday that voter approval of a ban on minarets next to mosques could be struck down in court, as critics at home and abroad swiftly condemned the vote, saying it undermined the country's liberal, secular image.

Legal experts have questioned whether the ban on the Islamic towers used for the call to prayer is compatible with the country's constitution and international human rights law.

Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said it would come into force immediately, but indicated that it could be overturned.

"The ban contradicts the European Convention on Human Rights," Zurich daily Blick cited Widmer-Schlumpf as saying. Switzerland currently presides over the court.

The vote brings the focus of an Europe-wide debate over Islam and immigration to Switzerland, and is a serious slap in the face for the government, which campaigned against it and was largely take by surprise.

The referendum backed by nationalist parties was approved by 57.5 percent of the population Sunday, forcing the government to declare illegal the building of any new minarets in Switzerland. It doesn't affect the country's four existing minarets

France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he was "a bit scandalized" by the vote, which amounts to "oppressing a religion."

"I hope that the Swiss will go back on this decision rather quickly," Kouchner said on France's RTL radio. "It is an expression of intolerance, and I detest intolerance."

The U.N.'s special investigator on religious freedom, Asma Jahangir, said the ban on new minarets constitutes "a clear discrimination against members of the Muslim community in Switzerland."

The largest Islamic organization in the world's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia's Nahdlatul Ulama, said on Monday the minarets ban contradicts Switzerland's claim to be a secular state.

"The action to ban the minaret is a discriminatory act in itself. It shouldn't be done in a country that believes in secularism, democracy and liberal minds," chairman Ahmad Baddjai said.

Observers concurred, pointing out that aside from the legal implications, Switzerland will also have a hard time explaining itself to the Muslim world.

"Switzerland's self-image of tolerance and multiculturalism has taken a huge hit," said Daniel Warner, a Swiss-American political scientist at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.

The decision could stir inter-religious tension and raise question about the freedom of belief for Muslims in the West, Lebanon's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, said.

Wealthy Arab tourists might think twice now about spending their money in Geneva and other Swiss cities popular with visitors from the Gulf, and the neutral country's efforts to mediate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could also take a hit, said Warner.

In a statement Monday, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the secretary general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, called the ban an "example of growing anti-Islamic incitement in Europe by the extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, racist, scare-mongering ultra-right politicians who reign over common sense, wisdom and universal values."

Arriving at a meeting of European Union justice ministers, Widmer-Schlump argued the vote was not "a referendum against Islam ... but a vote directed against fundamentalist developments."

She defended the referendum as being "about minarets and not, of course, about the Islamic community," she said. "We are interested in a multi-religious society in Switzerland."

Supporters of the ban said the number of Muslims in Switzerland had grown sharply from 50,000 in 1980, still only 4 percent of the 7.5 million population, many of them who don't practice.. Western Europe has an estimated 14 million Muslims.

Voting figures showed a rural-urban split in the Swiss vote, with only 38.6 percent of people in major cities backing the ban compared with about two-thirds of the population in smaller towns and villages, officials said.

Anne-Marie Birnstiel, a passer-by in the wealthy Alpine town of Gstaad told AP Television News she was disappointed by the vote and afraid of the consequences for Switzerland.

But, fellow town resident Anton Seil told APTN: "Well, we are in Switzerland, and if I go to another country I also can't build up my church or represent my faith. So, they have to adapt to us in Switzerland too."

Switzerland isn't alone in expressing fears about a growing Muslim population, though it is the only country where voters can easily enact constitutional amendments through referendums.

France, too, has enacted laws that Muslims claim are directed at them, including a ban on the wearing of religious symbols, such as headscarves, in schools.

French legislators are currently debating whether to forbid face-covering Islamic veils completely. The far-right, anti-immigration National Front party sought to use the vote to step up pressure on France's conservative government and President Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of regional elections in March.

"I think this is the expression of a worry shared by many European peoples who see politico-religious Islam, politico-religious groups demanding more and more visibility, demanding outward signs of their religion," said party vice president Marine Le Pen on France Culture radio.

Overnight, opponents of the minaret ban lit candles in front of the Swiss parliament in Bern and hung up banners saying "This is not my Switzerland."

In Zurich, the offices of the nationalist Swiss People's Party _ which had backed the ban _ were vandalized, police said. Unknown persons smashed a glass door, cantonal (state) police said.

Source: Associated Press

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/eu_s ... 92069.html