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SWITZERLAND: Muslims Targeted in the Name of Minarets
By Ray Smith
BERN, Oct 26 (IPS) - Switzerland's Muslim community is witnessing a xenophobic campaign by the political right-wing
ahead of a vote next month on the banning of Islamic minarets.
The initiative 'Against the construction of minarets' was submitted last year
by a committee of politicians from the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP)
and the conservative Federal Democratic Union (EDU). While the SVP holds 58
seats in Switzerland's National Council, the EDU only holds one of the the
council's 200 seats. The committee says minarets are a "symbol for religious-
political claims to power" and an instance of a creeping "Islamisation of
Switzerland".
Aware of the unrest the initiative could provoke among Muslims around the
world, the Swiss Federal Council, Switzerland's government, has asked voters
to reject the amendment. Its call was followed by majorities against the
initiative in the Council of States and the National Council, both chambers of
the Swiss parliament.
Switzerland is home to about 350,000 Muslims, accounting for less than five
percent of the population. Over the past 50 years, Muslim communities have
built more than 150 mosques, mostly in homes, garages or in industrial
areas. Only four minarets can be seen in the country, while construction of a
fifth is legally disputed in Langenthal town.
Tensions are rising ahead of the Nov. 27 vote. Propaganda placards have led
to lengthy debates in the media. One poster shows a veiled woman before a
Swiss flag penetrated by several black minarets. The picture is accompanied
by the words: "Stop. Yes to a ban on minarets."
Hisham Maizar heads the Federation of Islamic Umbrella Organisations,
representing almost half the Islamic centres in Switzerland. "They claim that
minarets will spread like mushrooms," he says. "It's unacceptable that
minarets are presented like rockets and that the pictured woman symbolises
an attitude which female Muslims can't identify with."
The initiative demands the addition of a single sentence to the Swiss
constitution: "The construction of minarets is forbidden." For its critics, the
story doesn't end here. "The initiative's real goal is not to avoid the
construction of a few minarets in Switzerland," says Balthasar Glättli,
secretary-general of Solidarité sans Frontières, an organisation promoting
migrants' rights. "It's obvious that this campaign is about spreading fears of
Islam and prejudices against people originating from Islamic countries."
Hisham Maizar, a Swiss doctor of Palestinian origin, is said to be Switzerland's
most influential Muslim. He is also a founding member of the multi-faith Swiss
Council of Religions. The national body made up of Jews, Christians and
Muslims firmly rejects the initiative.
Maizar accuses the initiators of leading a proxy debate on Islam instead of
minarets: "Their lack of arguments is indicated by their stereotyping: they
claim that minarets stand for sharia, Islamisation and burqas. However, this
isn't reflected in Switzerland's Islamic community at all. I can't remember
when I last saw a woman wearing a burqa in this country."
Switzerland has experienced similar right-wing campaigns in recent years. In
2002 Swiss citizens voted on an initiative against 'asylum abuse'. A
propaganda banner then showed a dark-skinned, black-haired man in black
clothes, wearing black sunglasses and gloves, emerging from the middle of
the Swiss flag and tearing it up. In 2007 and 2008, the SVP collected
signatures for an initiative demanding the deportation of criminal foreigners,
using the image of white sheep kicking a black sheep out of the Swiss flag.
"The initiative and the campaign have continuity as regards content and stand
in a tradition of right-wing populist campaigning in Switzerland," says Damir
Skenderovic, professor of contemporary history at the University of Fribourg
near capital Bern. "However, the current focusing on a specific group is
noticeable. The various migration-related votes and campaigns during the
nineties were kept much more general. It was about 'the stranger' or 'the
other', mainly in the form of asylum-seekers. Nowadays the focus is on one
specific group, namely Muslim immigrants."
Skenderovic, who has published several studies on racism, right-wing
extremism and migration politics in Switzerland, traces the origins of the
right-wing discourse to the late eighties. "At that time splinter parties like
Vigilance, National Action, and the Federal Democratic Union operated with
the threat of an assumed Islamisation, the flooding of the Christian West
by Islam. Nine-eleven definitely reinforced the discourse, but the phenomena
itself has a much longer tradition."
As in many European countries, Muslims have often been depicted as being
unable to integrate. The fiercest debates have erupted around veiled women,
the refusal of some Muslim parents to let their daughters join swimming
classes at school, and the conception of women in Islam in general. Maizar
strongly disagrees with the widespread stereotype that all Muslims are the
same: "The Muslim communities are very diverse. It's absurd to lump all
Muslims together, as the populists are doing."
Balthasar Glättli points out that the hostile conception of Islam in Switzerland
"is being nurtured totally independent of the number of Muslims in the
country. It's an attempt to create a cultural unity among Swiss people. Such
efforts usually serve less to define the enemy in detail, but more to create
one's group identity vis-à-vis something external."
Valentina Smajli is originally from Kosovo - and Muslim. Living in
Switzerland's Catholic heartland, she's active in the Social-Democratic Party
and in various political projects on migrants' issues. She says that like herself,
"many migrants from countries with a Muslim population treat their religion
indifferently and don't define themselves through Islam. However, also these
people sometimes are victims of hidden or frank anti-Muslim prejudices."
"Muslims in Switzerland are suffering from negative generalisations and
headlines," agrees Andi Geu, co-director of the National Coalition Building
Institute (NCBI), a Swiss institute devoted to fighting prejudice, racial
discrimination and violence. "When looking for apprenticeship, work or
housing, Muslims are often discriminated against."
Geu considers the SVP's anti-Muslim campaign a xenophobic effort "to keep
its constituency mobilised and attached to the party. It's not about the
minarets, it's about permanent election campaigning." NCBI is now running an
information campaign on Islam to confront the new initiative.
Shahab, a young Kurdish refugee from Iraq living in Bern considers the anti-
minaret initiative "a point of departure for right-wing attacks against all
migrants in Switzerland. The initiative basically targets foreigners, not
minarets," he says. "In the end two winners emerge: right-wing extremists
and radical Islamists. For the latter it's becoming easier to present Muslims as
an oppressed minority whose religious activities are being limited."
The current discourse on the 'Islamisation of Switzerland' can be seen in the
tradition of what Skenderovic calls the 'discourse of overforeignisation'. The
professor traces its origins back to the early 20th century. In Switzerland, the
discourse's impact drastically increased before the Second World War:
"Eventually, the discourse entered state policies and legislation. It continued
in refugee policy and was strongly connected to anti-semitism in the thirties
and the way the authorities dealt with Jewish refugees during the thirties and
throughout the Second World War."
The discourse of 'overforeignisation' was revitalised in the sixties by state
authorities, trade unions and right-wing populist parties, and became a
keystone of splinter parties' agendas. Its continuity was largely connected to
the radicalisation of the conservative Swiss People's Party.
"In the beginning of the nineties, specifically in 1991 and 1992, the SVP was
organisationally and structurally more or less overtaken by Zurich's cantonal
branch and the latter's agenda transferred to the federal SVP," says
Skenderovic. "At that time, the SVP took over the discourse of
'overforeignisation' from the splinter parties, especially regarding asylum and
integration policy."
Taking over radical right-wing parties' xenophobic agenda strengthened the
SVP and was a key to its rise in the past two decades. On the national level,
the SVP managed to swallow all parties on the right side of the political
spectrum. In the 2007 federal elections, the last seat in the National Council
held by the far-right party Social Democrats fell to the SVP, who won 29
percent of the vote.
In response to the anti-minaret placards, the local governments of Basel and
Lausanne towns recently decided to prohibit their display. Various other
cantons and cities have asked the Federal Commission against Racism for
advice. The commission regards the images as reinforcing prejudices against
Islam, presenting it as negative and potentially threatening.
But Hisham Maizar is against banning the posters. "I'm fundamentally against
bans, and advocate freedom of speech. However, I'm clearly against the fact
that the red lines of our democracy are crossed like this and that a specific
group like the Muslims are attacked in such an impious way."
Balthasar Glättli says he too opposes restricting freedom of speech, but has
some sympathy for those advocating the ban, because the campaign is really
going way too far. (END/2009)
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