Islam in Switzerland: The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Jihad

by Bruce Bawer  •  September 28, 2017 at 5:00 am

• What you would never know, from all this hand-wringing about "Islamophobia," is that only a few weeks before the conference, the country's media had reported on a popular imam in Biel who, in his sermons, "asked Allah to destroy the enemies of Islam -- Jews, Christians, Hindus, Russians, and Shiites."
• The imam in question, Abu Ramadan, preached that Muslims who befriended infidels were "cursed until the Day of Judgment" -- which, of course, is not radical at all, but is straight out of the Koran.
• The crisis is real. But, says Swiss Muslim author Saïda Keller-Messahli, Swiss politicians, "especially on the left," refuse to address it. Instead of trying to defend their country from radicalism, they think their job is to "protect minorities and multiculturalism."
• Mosque kindergartens and youth groups, too, are "places of religious indoctrination" for Swiss Muslims. So are the German-speaking public schools, in which imams are permitted to teach classes in Islam using instructional materials from Saudi Arabia or Turkey.

Saïda Keller-Messahli, the Swiss Muslim author of Switzerland: An Islamist Hub, has spent years investigating institutional Islam in Switzerland and urging politicians to take action against it. (Switzerland photo by Monk/Wikimedia Commons)

If you listen to some of Switzerland's pollsters and government officials, the country is suffering from a serious and ever-intensifying crisis -- anti-Muslim bigotry.

In August, a study concluded that Swiss Muslims "are generally well integrated into Swiss society." Their main problem? They face "Islamophobia."

Another study the same month found that the percentage of Swiss non-Muslims who feel "threatened" by Islam had more than doubled since 2004, from 16% to 38%.

At a September 11 conference, Switzerland's Federal Commission against Racism (FCR) issued an explicit alert: "hostility toward Muslims," it warned, was rising – and was "fed by facts that have nothing to do with Muslims themselves."

Conference organizers blamed this "hostility" on online "propaganda"; Interior Minister Alain Berset accused Swiss citizens of erroneously holding "Islam responsible for all the extremist acts committed in its name."

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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11082/switzerland-islam