Switzerland Bans Muslim Minarets

Exit polls by leading Swiss firm, gfs.bern, indicate that Swiss voters have overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure today to prospectively ban the construction of Muslim minarets—tall, slender mosque towers thought to symbolize Sharia law and radical Islam. The polling projections indicate that approximately 60 percent of Swiss voters in more than half of Switzerland's 26 canons supported the minaret ban, meaning that the initiative will become an amendment to the Swiss Federal Constitution. The amendment is not retroactive, however, and thus does not apply to existing mosque minarets.

"We're not against mosques, but the minaret is not mentioned in the Koran or other important Islamic texts. It just symbolizes a place where Islamic law is established," said Dr. Ulrich Schlüer, a member of the Swiss People's Party in the canton of Zürich and a leader of the movement to ban minarets. "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," he stated.

The Swiss People's Party is the majority political party in Switzerland and rules its parliament. Sponsorship of the minaret ban by the Swiss People's Party is considered to be part of a wider European counteraction against Sharia law and a growing Muslim fundamentalist population.

The seven-member Cabinet that heads the Swiss government, local officials, Muslim leaders and left-wing activists have spoken out strongly against the ballot measure. Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Zürich, lamented: "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. Muslims indeed will not feel safe anymore."