WHEN SWISS voters go to the polls this weekend, they face a decision far more significant than the usual referendum issues of transport and schools.
Sunday’s vote is on whether the Swiss want minarets banned from mosques. The initiative comes from the right-wing populist People’s Party (SVP) and, in keeping with recent tradition, the party has has rammed its point home with a poster. This time it shows a woman clad in a black burka before a Swiss flag dotted with black, missile-shaped minarets.
Attacked by critics as racist and xenophobic, the posters have plunged Switzerland into weeks of debate about religion and race, tolerance and terrorism. Looking on, nervously and angrily, are the country’s 400,000 Muslims.
“First it’s the minarets, then it’s the mosques, then the Muslims,” warned Ulysse Moh, caretaker of a Geneva mosque, to Swiss radio.
The campaign against minarets is a proxy battle: most of Switzerland’s Muslims originated in the Balkans and few are practising. Just four of Switzerland’s 200 mosques even have minarets and they are already subject to existing planning laws.
Lawyers say that the initiative, if passed, would breach existing Swiss laws guaranteeing freedom of belief and expression as well as equality and non-discrimination legislation.
Political observers view the “Islamisation” campaign as the latest in a series of attempts by the SVP to hijack Switzerland’s direct democracy model to boost its political profile.
Although similar campaigns in recent years – also using controversial posters – have ended in failure, they keep the SVP in the headlines. This time around, its politicians have spread dire warnings that minarets are “a sign of Islam’s pretensions to power”.
“The fear is great that after the minaret, the muezzin calling to prayer will follow,” said Walter Wobmann, an SVP MP from near Zürich, at a recent rally. “After that, sharia law . . . permitting, among other things, honour killings, forced marriages, burkas . . . and even stonings.”
Stirring up an already emotional debate is a long-running diplomatic battle with Libya, which detained two Swiss businessman in retaliation for the very public and mistaken arrest last year in Geneva of Hannibal Gadafy, son of the Libyan leader.
After detaining the two men indefinitely, Libya tabled a motion at the United Nations calling for Switzerland to be dismantled as a nation.
A broad civil society alliance has formed against the SVP vote, uniting all major political parties, churches, and business leaders.
“The Muslim minority is being attacked,” said Giusep Nay, a former Swiss supreme court chairman.
“The initiators of this anti-minaret campaign say they want to set an example. This is setting a very bad example of how to exclude a minority. This is an exclusion campaign that will hinder ongoing integration efforts.”
A recent poll suggests 53 per cent of voters are opposed to the initiative against minarets and that turnout may even fall short of the 50 per cent hurdle required to make the vote valid.