Minarets: plebiscites as opinion polls

The constitutional initiative was launched by Switzerland’s largest governing party, the radical right-wing Swiss People's Party. The referendum campaign was hardly about minarets but rather on Islam in general and Muslims in Switzerland. They make up a small minority of some 350,000 in a population of 7.7 million. More than half of Switzerland's Muslims come from the former Yugoslavia. (edit.)

Editorial by Peter Niggli published in: Alliance Sud News No.  62, Winter 2009/10

Counterproductive use of plebiscites as opinion polls

For some years now, topics have been put to referendum in Switzerland leading to the expression of a general popular sentiment rather than to political decisions. The referendum on the building of minarets is a perfect example of this. The concrete decision – prohibiting the building of minarets – played a purely symbolic role. The main issue was what we think of Muslims. Nothing good, a majority of voters decided, and they are today angrily defending themselves against the minority who are critical of the discrediting of Muslims via plebiscite.
Various minorities have been targeted over recent years – drug addicts, Yugoslavs and Albanians, «welfare scroungers», the «pseudo-disabled», Germans, and now Switzerland's Muslim minority. Other candidates are conceivable, which is why Swiss citizens of Jewish faith, for example, are following with disquiet the growing habit of stigmatising minorities through plebiscites. It has been possible at times, though by no means always, to defuse the «problem» by means of concrete policies. It is to be hoped that this will be the case with the Muslims.
The punishment of unwanted minorities by plebiscite is a source of internal political problems. It is hampering their integration into Switzerland as their country of immigration. It is leading those portrayed as a problem to retreat into their own identity. Amongst Muslims in Switzerland, who are spread across various national groups and are not very devout, the bashings by plebiscite are leading for the first time to the development of pan-Islamic sentiments.
But the decision on minarets is also spawning foreign policy problems. It is no gain for Switzerland that Europe's extremist right-wing parties hold up our country as a model. «Punitive operations» by plebiscite, which leave 1.6 billion Muslims and 56 countries feeling victimised, will inevitably elicit tit-for-tat responses. Only few people in this country seem to be aware that day after day, Switzerland must defend and assert its interests in the framework of international negotiations, which means that we need the understanding and support of other countries. No country in today’s world is «sovereign» enough not to give a hoot about the opinions and interests of other countries. That, nonetheless, is the atmosphere being cultivated for years now by those pursuing the policy of stigmatisation.
Peter Niggli, Director Alliance Sud