The Swiss do not want minarets, a majority voted for a complete ban on the construction. This decision does not seem to be a response to simmering problems in the Confederation. It shows deeply-rooted fears of Islam - which are seriously felt in other European countries as well.

Anti-Minaret Poster in train station

There are only four minarets on top of mosques in Switzerland. One of them for a few months in the 5,000-inhabitants village of Wangen near Olten. It is a tiny little tower in the middle of an industrial area, but its construction was the catalyst of a national controversy - which eventually led to the Peoples initiative of a religious right-winged group that wanted to enshrine in the constitution this one sentence: "The construction of minarets is forbidden."

57.5 percent voted for yes.  Also, the required majority of the cantons created no problems for the initiative: 22 of 26 cantons agreed to it and only the two city cantons of Geneva and Basel-City rejected it, as well as the two French-speaking cantons of Neuchâtel and Vaud.

Shockingly this issue of politicians of the extreme right is an apparent success.

Minarets understood as a "symbol of power"

For a long  time this initiative seemed to be the project of a right-wing splinter group. Even Christoph Blocher, the longtime leader of the Swiss People's Party (SVP), publicly distanced himself from the initiative, although his party finally almost unanimously expressed its consent.

But the promoters managed to have the dispute over the minarets be reinterpreted as a symbolic referendum on the influence of Islam. They spoke little of minarets, but even more so by the Sharia, of burqas and the oppression of women in the Islamic world. In the end, even  the prominent left wing feminist Julia Onken supported the initiative.

The poster, which the initiators used to catch votes, showed a Swiss flag on which black minarets were strung together closely, resembling rockets.  In addition there was a woman looking angry out from under a black burqa. It was the image of Switzerland, which is taken in possession by Islam . Minarets are "symbols of power," a foreign religion, such as the SVP right-winger Ulrich Schlüer argued, and the prohibition sety a sign against its spreading out.