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Minaret
ban referendum wins Swiss support:
Voters in Switzerland have approved a ban on the construction of
minarets on mosques, official results show.Of those who cast votes in Sunday's poll, 57.5 per cent approved the
ban, while only four cantons out of 26 rejected the proposals....
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Malegaon:
The Swiss People's Party's referendum to ban the construction of
Minaret in Switzerland that won the support from majority is
receiving widespread condemnation from all corner of the world.
"Disgraceful. That is the only way to describe the success of a
right-wing initiative to ban the construction of minarets in
Switzerland, where 57 percent of voters cast ballots for a bigoted
and mean-spirited measure", writes The New York Times
in its editorial
November 30 terming the results as 'A Vote for Intolerance'.
Voters in Switzerland have approved a ban on the construction of
minarets on mosques, official results show.
Of those who cast votes in Sunday's poll, 57.5 per cent approved the
ban, while only four cantons out of 26 rejected the proposals.
Stating that, under Switzerland’s system of direct rule, the
referendum is binding. Switzerland’s 400,000 or so Muslims, most of
whom come from Kosovo and Turkey, are legally barred from building
minarets as of now, The New York Times exhorted, "We can only hope
that the ban is quickly challenged, and that the Swiss courts will
find a way to get rid of it."
In Switzerland, Muslims amount to barely 6 percent of the population
and there is no evidence of Islamic extremism. The New York Time
writes, if its residents can succumb so easily to the propaganda of
a xenophobic right-wing party, then countries with far greater
Muslim populations and far more virulent strains of xenophobia best
quickly start thinking about how to counter the trend.
"Banning
minarets does not address any of the problems with Muslim
immigrants, but it is certain to alienate and anger them", states
The New York Times editorial.
After the official results of the referendum were known, far-right politicians
celebrated, while the government sought to assure the Muslim
minority that a ban on minarets was "not a rejection of the Muslim
community, religion or culture".
Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, Switzerland's justice minister, said the
result "reflects fears among the population of Islamic
fundamentalist tendencies".
"These concerns have to be taken seriously. However, the Federal
Council takes the view that a ban on the construction of new
minarets is not a feasible means of countering extremist
tendencies," she said.
Meanwhile, the Swiss
referendum has also concerned a vast majority of Muslims around the
globe. While expressing shock over the results Muslims in general
believe the move is an attack on their religious symbol.
Farhad Afshar, who heads the Co-ordination of Islamic Organisations
in Switzerland, said that "the most painful for us is not the
minaret ban, but the symbol sent by this vote."
Taner Hatipoglu, the
president of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Zurich,
said, "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. We are frightened, and if the atmosphere continues to be like this
and if the anti-Islamic hate increases, then the Muslims indeed will
not feel safe anymore. This of course is very unpleasant."
Egypt's Mufti Ali Gomaa
denounced the ban on new minarets as an insult to all Muslims. "This
proposal ... is not considered just an attack on freedom of beliefs,
but also an attempt to insult the feelings of the Muslim community
in and outside Switzerland."
Bernard Kouchner, a leftist
who is French Foreign Minister, said that he had been shocked.
Switzerland should reverse the decision quickly, he said. "If you
are not allowed to build minarets, that means that religion is being
oppressed."
About 400,000 Muslims live in Switzerland, whose population is just
under eight million. Most Muslim citizens are immigrants from the
former Yugoslavia and Turkey.
Although Islam is the country's second largest religion after
Christianity, there are only four mosques with minarets in the whole
country.
Posters by those backing the ban showed a figure of a woman shrouded
from head to foot in a burka. Behind her is the Swiss flag, shaped
like a map of the country, with black minarets shooting up out of it
like missiles.
The cities of Basel, Lausanne and Fribourg banned the billboards,
saying they painted a "racist, disrespectful and dangerous image" of
Islam.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee called the posters
discriminatory and said Switzerland would violate international law
if it bans minarets.
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