(Photo: Poster to vote ”yes” to minaret ban in a Swiss meadow, 13 Nov 2009/Dario Bianchi)

A threatening image dominates Switzerland’s streets in the form of a dark woman dressed in a Muslim niqab veil, looming over a Swiss flag covered with missile-like minarets with a call to vote “yes” in a referendum on Sunday to ban minarets on mosques here. The posters clearly seek to tap into the concerns of the country’s traditionally Christian majority about increased immigration from Muslim countries.

“I find the nature of these posters very provocative against the Islamic world. The presentation and the way the minarets are presented like rockets is unbelievable. Also the colours — with all the black — look very threatening,” says 34-year-old air traffic controller Judith Baumer.  “I assume that it’s supposed to trigger strong emotions or fear in the population.”

The poster, described by the Swiss race commission as demonising Muslims and provoking religious tensions, has been banned in some cities but seems omnipresent in others.

(Photo: Vote “yes” posters in Zurich’s main train station, 26 Oct 2009/Arnd Wiegmann)

Polls suggest the referendum could be close-run. With only a slim majority of Swiss questioned expressing opposition or a tendency to oppose a ban, turnout and currently undecided voters could yet sway the vote towards behind the “‘yes” campaign.

“It’s fine to build minarets in a Muslim country, not in Switzerland. I’m strictly against that,” says unemployed electrical fitter Rolf Waechtler.  “People from abroad are ok with me, but I’m in favour of them putting minarets directly there: abroad.”

The anti-minarets initiative was organised mainly by members the right-wing Federal Democratic Union (EDU) and Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which won the largest share of the vote at the last election on rising anti-foreigner sentiment in Switzerland spurred by increased immigration.

Under Swiss law citizens have the right to force referendums on any issue provided they collect enough signatures in support of their initiative.  But the Swiss government and other parties — including the Conservative Democratic Party (BDP), which broke away from the SVP in 2008 — oppose a ban, warning it would violate the country’s constitution and stir religious tension.

(Photo: “Yes” posters in German, French and Italian at SVP meeting in Geneva, 3 Oct 2009/Valentin Flauraud)

The Swiss vote is just the latest example of mistrust between Muslim and Christian communities that has created tensions and fuelled support for far-right groups in other European countries as well.

It is all the more surprising because Switzerland’s Muslims, who make up around 4 percent of the 7.6 million-strong population and are mainly of European origin, are a low-profile minority. There are also just four minarets in the entire country.

Three attacks on one of these few mosques with minarets, in Geneva, this month could indicate the ban is already having an effect on race relations in the country.

The initiative has been slammed at home and abroad and a ban would damage Switzerland’s reputation as a neutral country that upholds freedoms of worship, speech and expression. It could lead to the radicalisation of some members of a Muslim community generally regarded as well integrated into Swiss society.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee and Amnesty International say a ban would contravene Switzerland’s international obligations to uphold human rights.

(Photo: Poster to vote “no” to the minaret ban by Geneva interfaith group, 21 Nov 2009/Denis Balibouse)

And the Swiss think tank economiesuisse warns it would damage business at a time when the country’s private banks, hit hard by the relaxation of Swiss bank secrecy, are stepping up attempts to attract more business from Muslim clients around the world with new Islamic banking products.

On Sunday, the world will see whether Switzerland’s voters use their model of direct democracy to defend the country’s long-cherished values of tolerance and freedom or instead choose to isolate their country’s biggest religious minority.

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(Photo: Minaret of Zurich’s Mahmud Mosque, 23 May 2007/Christian Hartmann)

The Swiss Council of Religions, which is composed of leaders from the country’s Christian, Jewish and Islamic organisations, has issued a statement rejecting a proposed ban on minarets. A group of right-wing anti-immigrant politicians has gathered more than 100,000 signatures to support the so-called Minaret Initiative, saying the minarets threaten law and order. The vote is due on November 29.

The Swiss federal government has warned that the referendum vote was organised legally but a ban would violate international human rights and the country’s constitution. “Such a ban would endanger peace between religions and would not help to prevent the spread of fundamentalist Islamic beliefs,” its Department of Justice and Police said in late August.

The Council statement, the first it has made on a political issue since it was formed in 2006 to foster interfaith dialogue, denounces the bid as an affront to the tradition of diversity in the multilingual Alpine country. Here are some excerpts from the statement:

“The Swiss Council of Religions decisively rejects the Minaret Initiative. The Council, which consists of leaders from the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, is dedicated to protecting religious peace in Switzerland and to strengthening trust among the churches and religious communities. The Minaret Initiative would bring about just the opposite. It instrumentalizes religion for political aims and engenders mistrust among the populace…

“Switzerland has known cultural diversity for a long time. It is part of its history and characteristic of the Swiss identity. The people of this country have developed rules and systems of coexistence in the course of a long common history. The resulting rules are such an integral part of the cultural tradition of the country that its people are hardly aware of them in explicit terms; and at the center of this democratic self-image lies in the recognition of the freedom of each individual within the framework of a legal order that is equally binding for all…”

(Photo: Steeple and minaret in Wangen bei Olten, 7 August 2009/Michael Buholzer)

“The dialogue among the churches and religious communities of Switzerland shows that differences of religion, culture, tradition, and social-political views do not preclude a deep common belief that all people share the same inalienable dignity. The fundamental rights to the freedom of belief and conscience apply equally to all. The right to construct mosques and minarets can therefore not be made to depend on whether religious minorities enjoy the same religious freedoms in other countries. Answering injustice with further injustice would be a betrayal of Swiss values…

“The minaret initiative does not solve any problems. On the contrary, it only contributes to suspicion, mistrust, and aggression against people of Muslim faith…

“The signatures gathered for the referendum initiative lend expression to the people’s fears and concerns. What messages will be preached in the mosques? Is Islam more than just a religion? What significance do human rights, democracy and rule of law, and the equality of men and women have from a Muslim point of view? Does Islam seek the status of an exception in Switzerland due to its religious precepts? These questions and others like them will be asked and require discussion…”

Swissinfo.ch has an interesting interview with Council Secretary Markus Sahli that starts right off with the question — what does this interpretation of religious freedom mean for the debate over women wearing Muslim headscarves?  “The headscarf issue is a difficult one. The Council has come to the conviction that one cannot give an overall answer to this question. One must respond to it case by case…”

According to the Basler Zeitung, the Swiss government is concerned that the November 29 referendum could spark protests in the Muslim world and is preparing an information campaign to explain it abroad. The issue has not aroused much interest in Muslim countries so far, it says, so there are no plans now to start an information campaign that might only draw attention to the issue.

(Photo: Istanbul protest against Swiss publication of Prophet Mohammad cartoons, 10 Feb 2006/Ahmet Ada)

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German politicians have woken up to the potential fallout from the bloody killing in a Dresden courtroom of a 31-year-old Egyptian mother which has unleashed anger in the Islamic world.

It took Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has talked much about boosting the integration of Germany’s roughly 3.5 million Muslims, several days to condemn the killing, perpetrated by a German of Russian origin suspected of being a neo-Nazi.

Suddenly, the government is trying to soothe tensions to avert a potential storm similar to the violence which erupted over Denmark’s publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. And less than three-months before an election, politicians are also worried about security — intelligence services say Germany is already a target due to its deployment of troops in Afghanistan.

(Photo: Memorial gathering in Dresden - sign says “Racism kills,” 11 July 2009/Fabrizio Bensch)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the U.N. should condemn Germany for the killing. Last week, hundreds of mourners in Alexandria, Egypt, protested at the funeral of the slain woman, Marwa El-Sherbiny. Egyptian media have made much of the incident and some Egyptians have even called for a boycott of German products.

“Germany has no room for xenophobia or Islamophobia,” Merkel’s spokesman told reporters when pressed on the subject at a news conference, adding political failings had not led to the killing. Some politicians attended a memorial ceremony for the victim at the weekend.

However, the tragedy has raised questions — about the police, as well as politicians’, response.

The July 1 killing took place in a court where Marwa El-Sherbiny, pregnant and a mother of a three-year-old, was testifying against the attacker. He was appealing his conviction for insulting her by calling her an “Islamist”, “terrorist” and “slut” when she asked him to make room for her son to play on swings in a playground.

The killer not only stabbed her 18 times but also stabbed her husband. To make matters worse, police officers shot the husband, mistaking him for the attacker. He was in a coma for several days.

(Photo: Karachi protest against murder, 10 July 2009/Athar Hussain)

When Merkel fails to respond quickly to hate-crimes like this one, or woos her largely Catholic Christian Democrats (CDU) by saying that mosque minarets should be no taller than church steeples, she risks undoing some of the goodwill she has fostered with her official dialogue with Germany’s Muslim community.

Some groups, including the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, say Islamophobia has long been a phenomenon and want Merkel to describe the killing as a “brutal, racist, Islamophobic murder”.

Even the German media is only starting to link the attack to xenophobic attitudes.

Could this incident unleash an outburst of violence? And to what extent do you think Germans are conditioned to accept a degree of Islamophobia?

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Disputes about building mosques in Europe can get quite heated, snarling both opponents and proponents in bitter and emotional debates such as the Cologne mosque controversy we’ve written about here before. The far-right wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and some allies recently gathered enough signatures to force a national referendum on whether to ban the construction of minarets there. But while the anti-mosque movement has used oft-heard charges that minarets represent Islamic power that threatens law and order, the Swiss government has come up with an unusually detailed 49-page report opposing the ban. It combines legal and political arguments with such detail and precision that it could become a reference for pro-mosque/minaret arguments elsewhere in Europe.

The anti-minaret movement is getting support in some small Swiss towns where Islamic centres want to build minarets. Minarets already stand in some big cities like Zurich and Geneva and they would not be effected by the proposed constitutional amendment that simply says “The construction of minarets is forbidden.”

The government sent the Justice Department report to parliament with a simple cover letter urging the deputies to reject it. Here is the text (in German) and a summary (in English). Among the objections it laid out in lawyerly detail were that the proposal:

• “is clearly against a series of internationally guaranteed human rights, such as Articles 9 (freedom of religion and thought) and 14 (ban on discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights as well as against Articles 2 (ban on discrimination) and 18 (freedom of religion and thought) and possibly also Article 27 (protection of minorities) of the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights…
• “stands in contradiction to numerous fundamental values anchored in the constitution of our state, such as the principle of equality before the law, freedom of belief and conscience, the guarantee for private property, the principle of proportionality and the injunction to respect international law…
• “would be a completely disproportionate intrusion not only into central basic rights but also the competence of local authorities…
• “would be inappropriate for reaching the goals stated by the initiators. Violent anti-constitutional activities by extremist fundamentalist circles in the name of Islam cannot in any way be combated or hindered in this way, because their planning, organisation and execution are not linked to specific buildings. A ban such as the initiative seeks would actually endanger religious peace, because it would have to be seen by the Muslim population as a discriminatory act. The constitution and Switzerland’s whole legal system apply to Muslims living here as much as they do for other residents of our country…
• “would not only be met by consternation among the international community, but would also damage Switzerland’s standing around the world. This might, in turn, have a negative impact on the security of Swiss facilities and the interests of the Swiss economy.”

The Justice Department said the referendum petitions were valid, which means the vote will go ahead, and the issue is up to the people to decide. The government is clearly concerned that Switzerland could become a target of Muslim ire, echoing the Prophet Mohammad cartoon row in which Danish embassies were attacked and rioting rocked parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

The government has been embarrassed by other right-wing anti-immigrant initiatives featuring strident posters with white sheep kicking a black sheep off a Swiss flag, and brown and yellow hands reaching out to grab a pile of Swiss passports. Neither of those votes succeeded, but it was a tight margin on both occasions.

One thing, however, is on the government’s side — time. Due to various rules and regulations, getting the issue to a vote could take years.