Swiss voters have approved a proposal to ban the construction of minarets, after a rightwing campaign that labelled the mosque towers as symbols of militant Islam, projections by a respected polling institute show.
The projections based on partial returns indicate that support swung from 37% in favour of the ban a week ago to 59% in today's vote.
Claude Longchamp, head of the gfs.bern polling institute, said the projection for state-owned DRS television showed approval in more than half the country's 26 cantons, meaning the measure will become a constitutional amendment.
The nationalist Swiss People's party (SPP) described 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% of Switzerland's 7.5 million people, many of them refugees from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Fewer than 13% 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 SPP, 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 holiday in Switzerland.
Taner Hatipoglu, president of the Federation of Islamic Organisations 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 that if the anti-Islam atmosphere continued in the long term, "Muslims ... will not feel safe any more".
The seven-member cabinet that heads the Swiss government spoke out strongly against the initiative before the vote, 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 SPP has campaigned against immigrants in previous years – mainly unsuccessfully – 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 vote.
On Thursday, Geneva's main mosque was vandalised when a pot of pink paint was thrown 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.
• This article was amended on 30 November 2009. The original referred to the vote as a "referendum". This has been corrected, as two types of popular vote exist in Swiss law. The minarets vote was an "initiative".
