Swiss Decide Not to be Neutral on Radical Islam

This is kind of an unusual place to draw a line in the sand. They didn't ban Islam but banned one of its prominent symbols, the minaret:

Supporters of a ban argued minarets are a symbol of an Islamic claim to power.

"The Islamic religion is intolerant, but we do not want to limit freedom of religion, we want to outlaw the political symbol," says Ulrich Schlüer, a member of the rightwing Swiss People's party and one of the leading promoters of the anti-minaret initiative.

The group says it is time to act now before Christian values are undermined and violence flares in Muslim ghettoes as in neighbouring European states.

Supporters claim there is public concern about the growing Muslim community in Switzerland, radical imams, the role of women, as well as head scarves and other dress codes.

Immigrants
The number of Muslim immigrants has increased to about 350,000 (up to 4.5 per cent of the Swiss population) since the 1990s. Most of them came from the former Yugoslavia and Turkey and are considered moderates.

There are an estimated 160 mosques and prayer rooms in Switzerland, mainly in disused factories and warehouses. Only four of them have a minaret, including the mosques in Geneva and Zurich.

In the wake of heated debates at a local level about requests to build more minarets, members of the People's Party and the Federal Democratic Union collected enough signatures to force a nationwide vote.

Europe is being taken over by radical Islamists seeking to turn those nations into Sharia-following Muslim countries. The Danes have had all kinds of problems over the "cartoons of blasphemy", and there was murderous violence in The Netherlands against critics of Islam. In France the Muslim "youth" burn cars for sport, and in Britain the nation is only a few small steps away from accepting Sharia law alongside their own. Criticism of Islam in England can get you charged with a crime.

What's going on in Europe should be a warning to us all.