Swiss ban minarets

[Electronic God-Man]

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.

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.

Source

[Zyklop]

<headline>Switzerland 'approves minaret ban'</headline>
<cite>November 30, 2009 - 3:24AM</cite>

<bod> 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.

</bod> © 2009 AFP

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news...1129-jz0s.html

[Loki]

The most shocking part is that this ban is even necessary. In Switzerland? Crazy shit. When I think Switzerland, I think rural idyll, cheese, cuckoo clocks, cattle and mountains. And yodeling.

[Jamt]

Switzerland appears to have backed minaret ban

Voters in Switzerland appeared to have backed a call to ban minarets from mosques, according to early exit poll results.

By Alexandra Williams in Geneva and Bruno Waterfield
Published: 10:16AM GMT 29 Nov 2009

A pedestrian walks past a display advertising the initiative against the construction of new minarets in Switzerland, in Geneva Photo: REUTERS
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." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...naret-ban.html

[Ulf]

The most shocking part is that this ban is even necessary. In Switzerland? Crazy shit. When I think Switzerland, I think rural idyll, cheese, cuckoo clocks, cattle and mountains. And yodeling.

Think of it as a prophylactic.

[RoyBatty]

Good move. Now when can action be taken against the NWO and its EU offspring from Brussels? When can we have an end to the occupation of Europe by USRael?

[Cato]

The inevitable whine will commence henceforth.

[Electronic God-Man]

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."

Sounds good to me. Maybe they will pack up and leave then.

[RoyBatty]

The inevitable whine will commence henceforth.

Let them cry. Who cares. It's outrageous that Europe has been putting up with this BS for so long. There's no way similar activities would have been tolerated in most of the Middle East.

Even Israel has policies against Christian proselytizing. (*Note that I'm not promoting Christianity but since European society is shaped to an extent by "Christian characteristics" it needed to be mentioned.)

Why the hell do we always bend over backward to accommodate our competitors (Jews, Muslims, Africans, Asians etc) while they take full advantage of our generous idiocy?

Why did we become suicidal and started allowing ourselves to be led like lambs to the slaughter by those who wish to exploit and undermine us and destroy our civilisations in favour of their ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT?

[Sol Invictus]

Good move. Now when can action be taken against the NWO and its EU offspring from Brussels? When can we have an end to the occupation of Europe by USRael?

When pigs fly.

And I'm not talking about swine flu.

j/k