Switzerland confronted an international backlash on Monday over a shock vote to ban new minarets, while the government struggled to reassure stunned Muslims that they were not regarded as outcasts.
Muslim leaders expressed dismay after a referendum on Sunday voted for a constutional ban on the construction of towers attached to mosques from where Muslims are traditionally called to prayer.
About 57,5% of those who cast their ballot supported the measure amid a high turnout by Swiss standards of 53%.
The result flew in the face of opinion polls that had predicted a ”no” vote, and caught out government ministers who had opposed the ban alongside the bulk of Switzerland’s political and religious establishment.
The government rushed to assure the country’s 400 000 Muslims, mainly from the Balkans and Turkey, that the outcome was not a rejection of the Muslim religion or culture.
However, the result was condemned in the world’s most populous Muslim nations and elsewhere in Europe as a display of intolerance.
Swiss newspapers also warned that the referendum had inflicted ”spectacular damage” to the country’s international standing and the country could become the targets of boycotts and other forms of retaliation.
”Some people, traumatised by the crisis, put a vote of protest and suspicion, rather than hate or mistrust in the box. It has come out as a bomb,” Le Temps daily said.
Members of the hard right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) — Switzerland’s biggest party — and other right wing groups brought the ”people’s initiative” referendum after petitioning 100 000 signatures from eligible voters.
The constitutional amendment only bans the construction of minarets, and has no impact on mosques, or a cornerstone of the Swiss Constitution, the freedom of religious worship.
Switzerland has just four minarets, which are not allowed to broadcast the call to prayer, as well as about 200 mosques, according to official sources.
The government said it respected the decision. Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf acknowledged that the result ”reflects fears among the population of Islamic fundamentalist tendencies”.
”These concerns have to be taken seriously … However, the Federal Council [government] takes the view that a ban on the construction of new minarets is not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies,” she stressed.
Widmer-Schlumpf added: ”It is not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture. Of that, the Federal Council gives its assurance.”
But local Muslim leaders expressed dismay.
”The most painful for us is not the minaret ban, but the symbol sent by this vote. Muslims do not feel accepted as a religious community,” said Farhad Afshar, who heads the Coordination of Islamic Organisations in Switzerland.
International reaction was also critical.
”It’s an expression of quite a bit of prejudice and maybe even fear, but it is clear that it is a negative signal in every way, there’s no doubt about it,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country holds the European Union presidency.
Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, called the vote ”an expression of intolerance and I detest intolerance.”
Maskuri Abdillah, head of Indonesia’s biggest Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama, said that vote reflected ”a hatred of Swiss people against Muslim communities”.
Egypt’s Mufti Ali Gomaa, the Egyptian government’s official interpreter of Islamic law, denounced the minaret ban as an ”insult” to Muslims across the world and ”an attack on freedom of beliefs”.
Muslims account for just five percent of Switzerland’s population of 7,5-million people, and form the third largest religion group after the dominant Roman Catholic and Protestant communities, although just 50 000 are estimated to openly worship. — AFP
