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It is true that the construction of mosques has met with opposition over the last several years in Catholic-predominant Poland: In a sight familiar in some west European countries but new to Poland, dozens of protesters demonstrated in a Warsaw suburb against the construction of a mosque.
The Swiss government said it would respect the vote and sought to reassure the Muslim population mostly immigrants from other parts of Europe, like Kosovo and Turkey that the minaret ban was “not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture.”
Campaign posters depicting a Swiss flag sprouting black, missile-shaped minarets alongside a woman shrouded in a niqab, a head-to-toe veil that shows only the eyes, starkly illustrated the determination of the right to play on deep-rooted fears that Muslim immigration would lead to an erosion of Swiss values.
Poland has refused to allow mosques to be constructed in that country until churches can be built in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia’s prohibition on the establishment of non-Muslim houses of worship and the (public) performance of non-Muslim religious services has long rankled many citizens of Christian-predominant countries, especially those countries — such as the U.S. — that keep military troops stationed in the Saudi kingdom to help protect its security.
Because the ban gained a majority of votes and passed in a majority of the cantons, it will be added to the Constitution. The Swiss Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but the rightist Swiss People’s Party, or S.V.P., and a small religious party had proposed inserting a single sentence banning the construction of minarets, ...
Image. Walter Wobmann, president of the committee “Yes for a Ban on Minarets,” gave a thumbs-up in Egerkingen, Switzerland, on Sunday. Credit... Marcel Bieri/Keystone, via Associated Press. “That Switzerland, a country with a long tradition of religious tolerance and the provision of refuge to the persecuted, should have accepted such ...
GENEVA In a vote that displayed a widespread anxiety about Islam and undermined the country’s reputation for religious tolerance, the Swiss on Sunday overwhelmingly imposed a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques, in a referendum drawn up by the far right and opposed by the government.
While such concerns “have to be taken seriously,” she said in a statement, “The Federal Council takes the view that a ban on the construction of new minarets is not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies. ”.