Citing religious discrimination, a diverse coalition of Jewish organizations is voicing its objections to Switzerland’s ban of minarets on local mosques.
Jewish organizations have joined Muslims, the Vatican and other groups in warning that the Swiss referendum, approved Nov. 29, could fuel hatred, jeopardize religious freedom and further polarize an already divided society.
“Discriminatory laws like a ban on minarets are likely to alienate rather than ease integration,” the Board of Deputies of British Jews said in a statement. “They also give succor to the unacceptable politics of unlimited hate being peddled around Europe by right-wing extremists.”
France’s chief rabbi also criticized the vote, as did two influential U.S. Jewish organizations, the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee. Both the Swiss government and Switzerland’s Jewish community had strongly opposed the initiative.
Called by the far-right Swiss People’s Party — the country’s largest political party — the referendum won the support of nearly 58 percent of voters. The result, which stunned many observers, mandates a constitutional ban on the construction of minarets, or prayer towers, on newly built mosques.
Martin Baltisser, the general secretary of the Swiss People’s Party, told the BBC, “This was a vote against minarets as symbols of Islamic power.”
Posters backing the Swiss referendum had blatantly played on fears of Islamist extremism. Some showed a sinister, black-veiled figure in front of black minarets arrayed to look like missiles rising out of a Swiss flag.
The referendum is the latest round in a series of ongoing debates and controversies over how to deal with a growing Muslim population in Europe. In France, there have been sharp debates over whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear veils in public schools. And in the past few years, anti-immigrant protesters have demonstrated against the building of mosques in Germany, Italy and elsewhere in Western Europe.
The results of the referendum drew widespread criticism from political and religious bodies around the world.
Jewish criticism focused on concern that the crackdown on Muslims could foster extremism and harm efforts to integrate Muslim communities. But Jewish leaders also warned of possible repercussions for Jews and other minorities.
“For the Swiss People’s Party, as for all far-right parties in Europe, any group that is different in terms of its appearance or its language or its cultural or religious traditions is regarded as a target,” said David Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee. “We stand firmly against these rabble-rousing politics in the name of pluralism and democracy.”
The ADL slammed the referendum as “a populist political campaign of religious intolerance,” and in a joint statement ahead of the vote, the two main Swiss Jewish umbrella groups opposed the measure.
France’s Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim called on leaders of “all religions” to work for “dialogue and openness.”
About 400,000 Muslims live in Switzerland in a population of 7.5 million. Four mosques in the country have minarets.
Many Muslims in Switzerland are refugees from the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. During those wars, Orthodox Serb and Catholic Croat fighters deliberately targeted hundreds of mosques for destruction.
Matthew Wagner and Herb Keinon of the Jerusalem Post contributed to this report.