Swiss ban minarets

GENEVA — Swiss voters approved a move to ban the construction of minarets in a Sunday vote on a right-wing initiative that labeled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a widely respected polling institute showed.

The projections based on partial returns say Swiss swung from only 37 percent supporting the proposal a week ago to 59 percent in the actual voting.

Claude Longchamp, leader of the widely respected gfs.bern polling institute, said the projection contracted by state-owned DRS television forecasts approval of the initiative by more than half the country’s 26 cantons, meaning it will become a constitutional amendment.

The nationalist Swiss People’s Party describes minarets, the distinctive spires used in most countries for calls to prayer, as symbols of rising Muslim political and religious power that could eventually turn Switzerland into an Islamic nation.

Muslims make up about 6 percent of Switzerland’s 7.5 million people.

Many Swiss Muslims are refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Fewer than 13 percent practice their religion, the government says, and Swiss mosques do not broadcast the call to prayer outside their buildings.

“Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure — we don’t have that in Switzerland, and we do not want to introduce it” said Ulrich Schlueer, co-president of the Initiative Committee to ban minarets.

The move by the People’s Party, the country’s largest party in terms of popular support and membership in parliament, is part of a broader European backlash against a growing Muslim population.

It has stirred fears of violent reactions in Muslim countries and an economically disastrous boycott by wealthy Muslims who bank, shop and vacation in Switzerland.

Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organizations 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.”

Hatipoglu said if in the long term the anti-Islam atmosphere continues, “Muslims indeed will not feel safe anymore.”

The seven-member Cabinet that heads the Swiss government has spoken out strongly against the initiative, and local officials and rights defenders objected to campaign posters showing minarets rising like missiles from the Swiss flag next to a fully veiled woman.

The People’s Party has campaigned mainly unsuccessfully in previous years against immigrants with campaign posters showing white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag and another with brown hands grabbing eagerly for Swiss passports.

The four minarets already attached to mosques in the country are not affected by the initiative.

Geneva’s main mosque was vandalized Thursday when someone threw a pot of pink paint at the entrance. Earlier this month, a vehicle with a loudspeaker drove through the area imitating a muezzin’s call to prayer, and vandals damaged a mosaic when they threw cobblestones at the building.

Daily Mail Blogs

Swiss vote on proposal to ban minarets

By ELIANE ENGELER

GENEVA — The campaign posters are inflammatory: Minarets rising like missiles from the national flag.

A proposal championed by right-wing parties to ban minarets in Switzerland goes to a nationwide vote on Sunday in a referendum that has set off an emotional debate about national identity and stirred fears of boycotts and violent reactions from Muslim countries.

With tensions running high, the Geneva Mosque was vandalized Thursday by unidentified individuals who threw a pot of pink paint at the building's entrance.

It was the third incident against the mosque this month: earlier, a vehicle with a loudspeaker drove through the area imitating a muezzin's call to prayer, and vandals threw cobble stones at the building, damaging a mosaic.

Business leaders say a minaret ban would be disastrous for the Swiss economy because it could drive away wealthy Muslims who bank in Switzerland, buy the country's luxury goods, and frequent its resorts.

The vote taps into anxieties about Muslims that have been rippling through Europe in recent years, ranging from French fears of women in body veils to Dutch alarm over the murder by a Muslim fanatic of a filmmaker who made a documentary that criticized Islam.

Polls indicate growing support for the proposal submitted by the anti-immigrant Swiss People's Party, but it was doubtful it will gain enough momentum to pass. Muslims in Switzerland have kept a low profile, refraining from a counter-campaign.

"Switzerland's good reputation as an open, tolerant and secure country may be lost and this would bring a blow to tourism," said Swiss Hotel Association spokesman Thomas Allemann.

The nationalist Swiss People's Party has led several campaigns against foreigners, including a proposal to kick out entire families of foreigners if one of their children breaks a law and a bid to subject citizenship applications to a popular vote.

The party's controversial posters have shown three white sheep kicking out a black sheep and a swarm of brown hands grabbing Swiss passports from a box.

The current campaign posters showing missile-like minarets atop the national flag and a fully veiled woman have drawn anger of local officials and rights defenders.

The cities of Basel, Lausanne and Fribourg banned the billboards, saying they painted a "racist, disrespectful and dangerous image" of Islam.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee called the posters discriminatory and said Switzerland would violate international law if it bans minarets.

More at AP

Thomas Sowell : Bowing to "World Opinion"

In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.

Terrorists are not even entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, much less the Constitution of the United States. Terrorists have never observed, nor even claimed to have observed, the Geneva Convention, nor are they among those covered by it.

But over and above the utter inconsistency of what is being done is the utter recklessness it represents. The last time an attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a matter of domestic criminal justice was after a bomb was exploded there in 1993. Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense-- information that told the Al Qaeda international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it.

This was nothing more and nothing less than giving away military secrets to an enemy in wartime-- something for which people have been executed, as they should have been. Secrecy in warfare is a matter of life and death. Lives were risked and lost during World War II to prevent Nazi Germany from discovering that Britain had broken its supposedly unbreakable Enigma code and could read their military plans that were being radioed in that code.

"Loose lips sink ships" was the World War II motto in the United States. But loose lips are mandated under the rules of criminal prosecutions.

Tragically, this administration seems hell-bent to avoid seeing acts of terrorism against the United States as acts of war.

The very phrase "war on terrorism" is avoided, as if that will stop the terrorists' war on us.

The mindset of the left behind such thinking was spelled out in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, which said that "Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be tried the right way-- the American way, in a federal courtroom where the world will see both his guilt and the nation's adherence to the rule of law."

Read it all at Townhall

The Troubling Background of Geneva Interfaith Conference Participants

More than 100 religious leaders gathered Wednesday in Geneva for a two-day conference entitled "The Impact of King Abdullah's Inter-Religious Dialogue Initiative in Disseminating Human Values." Many of the listed "conference participants," however, are tainted by troubling resumes of anti-Semitism, empathy for radical Islamist ideology and support for terrorist organizations.

The conference organizer, the Muslim World League (MWL) is alleged to have connections to Al Qaeda. Reports detail how MWL has provided Islamic militants, including Osama bin Laden and his followers, with financial[i] and organizational[ii] help. MWL's U.S. offices have been raided by the FBI as part of an investigation into a network of Virginia-based Islamic charities and corporate entities suspected of having ties to terrorist groups. Also, MWL leaders have made statements in support of suicide bombings and published anti-Semitic articles.

Perhaps the most disconcerting participant listed to attend King Abdullah's conference is William Baker – an anti-Semite with neo-Nazi connections. Baker claims that he met with the now U.S. designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) Hizballah during the Lebanon hostage crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s. While Hizballah was not yet designated at this time, Baker was hanging out with an organization that was kidnapping foreign nationals in Lebanon and holding them hostage – foreign nationals that were largely American and European. Read more ...

Source: IPT News

Iran to Allow Inspection of Qom Facility

by Maayana Miskin

Iranian diplomats announced Thursday that they would allow international inspectors to visit the uranium enrichment plant near the city of Qom.

The existence of the formerly covert plant was officially revealed late last week after years of research by foreign intelligence agents.

Permission to visit the Qom site was granted as Iranian officials met in Geneva with representatives from the United States, Russia, Europe and China.

Iranian diplomats were offered upgraded economic and political ties in exchange for opening all of their country's nuclear program to international inspectors.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced his intention to allow inspection of the site when its existence became public knowledge. “We have no secrecy, we work within the framework of the IAEA,” he said at the time, referring to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.

European and United States leaders expressed satisfaction with the announcement, and said they expected oversight of the Qom plant to begin immediately.

French official Jacques Audibert said Iran must allow inspections within two weeks, and must provide “proof of a deep evolution in the management” of its nuclear program.

U.S. President Barack Obama made a similar demand, saying Iran had two weeks to grant “unfettered access” to international inspectors. “Our patience is not unlimited,” he warned.

Earlier in the day diplomats expressed cautious optimism over the Geneva talks, saying Iran had avoided an in-depth discussion of its nuclear program but had expressed willingness to meet again.

Foreign leaders later announced that Iran had also agreed to allow a foreign power to process its low-enriched uranium for use in a medical research center.

Source: INN

Defiant Tehran lectures world leaders

TEHRAN: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lashed out at world leaders last night for demanding access to Iran's newly disclosed uranium enrichment plant near the central holy city of Qom.

"The leaders of these countries made a historic mistake with their comments about the new plant.

After this they also said Iran must give access to the facility as quickly as possible," state television quoted him as saying. "Who are you to tell the (International Atomic Energy Agency) and Iran what to do?"

Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran would not be "harmed", whatever happened at today's talks with the major powers in Geneva aimed at resolving the crisis over its atomic program.

"The negotiators can definitely adopt any policy that they want, but we will not be harmed," he said. "Iran has prepared itself for any condition and our nation has learnt over the past 30 years to stand on its feet and change any circumstance to its benefit."

Mr Ahmadinejad said the talks were an "exceptional opportunity for US and a few European countries to correct the way they interact with other world nations".

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran had flouted the law by concealing the plant.

"Iran has been on the wrong side of the law in so far as the IAEA regulation to inform the agency at an earlier date," he told India's CNN-IBN last night.

"Iran was supposed to inform us on the day it was decided to construct the facility. They have not done that."

Iran's atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi had said he was ready to discuss world concerns about the plant, but ruled out bargaining about Iran's right to master the nuclear fuel cycle.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Tehran would not give up its "right" to nuclear technology.

The UN Security Council has imposed three sets of sanctions against Iran over its failure to heed repeated ultimatums to suspend enrichment.

Source: The Australian

Geneva to host Islamic Conference in May to promote Shariah Laws

The rapid development of the Islamic finance and Islamic banking industry, not only in the Middle East but across the globe, has produced new Shariah compliant products and structures, which have in turn resulted in a substantial growth in demand for Islamic financial services. The number of Islamic institutions and their assets grew approximately at an average annual rate of 20% in the world.

Western countries are now developing more competitive Islamic Finance products which are no longer considered as a specialised structure developed for religious purposes. Except for London, European financial centres do currently not have a suitable offer to those who wish to invest a part in conformity with Islam, comparing to Dubai, Bahrain and Singapore. Although having a net delay in Islamic banking financial centres like Geneva manage today up to 300 billion dollars asset Moslems.

This conference aims to examine some critical issues arising from the implementation of Islamic Finance from jurist, legal, and practical perspectives with a focus on how to create Shariah Compliance in Financial Products, and how to incorporate Islamic Finance into the financial mainstream. Read more ...

Source: Financial Events
H/T: Sharia Finance Watch