Breaking: Swiss Back Referendum Banning Minarets
The Swiss People's Party's controversial poster urging a 'Yes' vote to ban minarets in Switzerland
More than 57% of Swiss voters have supported a referendum proposal to ban the building of minarets, according to results from 25 out of 26 cantons.
Partial results from the final canton indicated 68% of people there supported the ban, Swiss news agency ATS said.
The proposal has been backed by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), the largest party in parliament, which claims minarets are a sign of Islamisation.
Opponents say a ban will discriminate and that the ballot has stirred hatred.
The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes, in Bern, says the surprise result is very bad news for the Swiss government which had urged voters to reject a ban on minarets, fearing unrest among the Muslim community and damage to Switzerland’s relations with Islamic countries.
Switzerland is home to some 400,000 Muslims and has just four minarets.
“This will cause major problems because during this campaign in the last two weeks different mosques were attacked, which we never experienced in 40 years in Switzerland “
– Tamir Hadjipolu: Zurich’s Association of Muslim Organisations
Our correspondent says voters worried about rising immigration, and with it the rise of Islam, have ignored the government’s advice.
Islam is the most widespread religion after Christianity in Switzerland, but it remains relatively hidden.
There are unofficial Muslim prayer rooms, and planning applications for new minarets are almost always refused.
Supporters of a ban claim that allowing minarets would represent the growth of an ideology and a legal system – Sharia law – which are incompatible with Swiss democracy.
But others say the referendum campaign incited hatred. On Thursday the Geneva mosque was vandalised for the third time during the campaign, according to local media.
Before the vote, Amnesty International warned that the ban would violate Switzerland’s obligations to freedom of religious expression.
‘Political symbol’
The president of Zurich’s Association of Muslim Organisations, Tamir Hadjipolu, told the BBC that if the ban was implemented, Switzerland’s Muslim community would live in fear.
“This will cause major problems because during this campaign in the last two weeks different mosques were attacked, which we never experienced in 40 years in Switzerland.
“So with the campaign… the Islamaphobia has increased very intensively.”
Sunday’s referendum was held after the People’s party collected 100,000 signatures from eligible voters within 18 months calling for a vote.
SVP member of parliament Ulrich Schluer said the referendum campaign had helped integration by encouraging debate. He rejected the charge of discrimination.
“Every Muslim is allowed to come together with other Muslims to have the religion together,” he told the BBC.
“But a minaret is a political symbol. It is a symbol for introducing, step-by-step, Sharia rights also in Switzerland, parallel to the Swiss law which is a result of Swiss democracy. And this is the problem. It is nothing against Muslims.”
In recent years many countries in Europe have been debating their relationship with Islam, and how best to integrate their Muslim populations.
France focused on the headscarf, while in Germany there was controversy over plans to build one of Europe’s largest mosques in Cologne.
Minarets are not exotic decorative architectural detail. They are a fully-intentional symbol of the projection of the power of political Islam. The Swiss are right to reject this supremacist symbolism in Europe.
Other countries should follow.
[Source: BBC Online]
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Posted in 'Offended' Islam, EUrabia, Multiculturalism | 
Tags: Good News, Islamic Supremacism, The Worm Turns
Maybe the US & other nations should follow Swiss style direct democracy?
The Swiss just voted to ban minarets on mosques and this is a great exercise of their unique form of direct democracy regardless of your views on the subject. But my question is why do the Swiss get to overrule their politicians and parliament and here in the US, we don’t have that right?
Let’s bring Swiss style direct democracy to the United States so Americans can vote on the Wall Street bailouts, government health care, whether to audit or abolish the FED, or require Congress declare war before we invade another country. Read why Switzerland is free and America is not and help restore citizen control over the US government and Congress currently under control of special interests. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/holland9.1.1.html
“The domes are our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, the mosques our barracks and the believers our soldiers.” Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey
“There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey
Sharia is premised on the inherent inequality in islam between Moslems and non-Moslems, male and female and freemen and slaves. Sharia is antithetical to all Western values, systems of jurisprudence and government, and is the source of innumerable human rights abuses. Sharia cannot be divorced from Islam: Jihad is the tactic by which Islam is made dominant and its Sharia the only way of life.
The Swiss have shown that, whenever and wherever free men and women exercise their Right and their Duty to vote, they will never vote to enslave themselves under tyranny by an individual or an ideology.
The vote in Switzerland is fascinating in that it was essentially a ‘women’s issue’. The men basically followed.
It is not the theory of equality of women in Islam, but the hard reality of 15 years of experience by girls and women of the social reality of appalling behaviour by Moslem men that has stripped away any illusions.
Moslems came as refugees, were given asylum. Educated, housed.
And the repayment….constant harassment and violence so much so that women feel intimidated.
‘Tatiana, a teacher who had previously voted for the left, was quoted in a newspaper as saying she would vote for the minaret ban as she could “no longer bear being mistreated and terrorised by boys who believe women are worthless”.
Socialist politicians have been furious to see icons of the left joining what is regarded as an anti-immigrant campaign by the populist Swiss People’s party, the biggest group in parliament.
One of them, Julia Onken, warned that failure to ban minarets would be “a signal of the state’s acceptance of the oppression of women”. She has sent out 4,000 emails attacking Muslims who condone forced marriage, honour killings and beating women.’
Richard: Unfortunately, if the West insists on gaining for Muslim women their rights, and succeed, what are the chances that “empowered” Muslim women will join their pacified men in the jihad against the West? I believe the progress of the religion comes WAY before “women’s rights” for Muslims.