A new Swiss study has found that some Muslim women have more say in their communities than many Christian or Jewish women.
Researchers from the National Science Foundation wanted to know which women had the option of taking on leadership roles within their religious communities.
A Reformist priest from a tiny Bernese village is under investigation by church leaders after it emerged that she helped run a fanatical anti-Islamic website.
The Council of Reformist Churches for Bern, Solothurn and Jura has criticised the priest, and declared her activities on website ‘Politically Incorrect’ to be “incompatible” with her position as a priest due to the “Islam-baiting” that takes place on it, newspaper Tages Anzeiger reported.
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The Federal Court says an anti-Islam group has the right to give out leaflets from an information booth if it wants – and the local authorities must protect them.
Fribourg Council banned the group – The Movement Against the Islamization of Switzerland – from setting up an information booth Place Georges-Python during the anti-minaret campaign in 2009.
It said it refused to give permission because of a fear that violence and unrest would break out as a result, provoking a legal challenge.
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TUNGER: “At one point, earlier or later, you have to tackle this question, because the Muslims are there. They have the constitutional right for a decent burial. What experience shows is that more than a dozen municipalities in Switzerland have found a solution by a process in which local authorities and local Muslims sit at a table and discuss what possibilities do we have, what solutions do we have. Almost everywhere a solution has been found.”
Cornel Suter at Lucerne’s cemetery says working with the local Muslim association has been helpful for a number of reasons—pointing out religious requirements, helping with language, or even mediating cultural differences. He is thankful for that.
Researcher Andreas Tunger sees this example as paramount:
TUNGER: “What we have seen until now is very much goodwill on this very grassroots level, which the populist tendencies cannot so easily exploit for national campaigns.”
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The Federal Migration Office has launched a language training system specifically defined around the integration needs of migrants. The course will be gradually introduced in collaboration with the cantons from the summer.
Called “FIDE – learn, teach and assess French, Italian and German in Switzerland”, the training system will become the nationwide norm for immigrant language training.
Its focus will be on giving immigrants the language competence needed to undertake such ordinary tasks such as consulting a doctor or attending parent-teacher meetings.
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Several Swiss residents last year travelled abroad to join jihadist terrorist groups, the Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) said on Tuesday, noting that an increase in jihad-motivated travel had been observed generally across Europe.
Releasing its annual report on Switzerland’s security situation, FIS said it was aware of several former Swiss residents who are currently in “a jihad area like Somalia or Afghanistan/Pakistan in order to take part in hostilities”.
However, the report said that while an increase in jihad-motivated travel movements had been observed across Europe – including in Switzerland – last year, the number of cases remained small, making it difficult to determine if there had been an increase in travel specifically from Switzerland.
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Switzerland’s economy minister said on Wednesday that the Swiss government is concerned with a possible boycott of Swiss products overseas because xenophobic tendencies have found more ground in the wealthy European country.
Answering Today’s Zaman’s question in a written interview before boarding a plane to Ankara for an official visit on Thursday, Johann Schneider-Ammann,
the Swiss head of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, said: “This is a big concern for my government. The key to solving this issue is dialogue; dialogue with Muslim communities in Switzerland and, on the international level, dialogue with Muslim countries.”(source)
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The parents argued that, in accordance with the teachings of the Koran, they wanted to instil a sense of shame in their children before they reached puberty. Mixed swimming lessons in primary school, the family claimed, would be incompatible with such an aim.
Following the family’s appeal of the original Administrative Court verdict, the Federal Court decided to uphold the fine. The court stated that the obligation to participate in mixed swimming classes did not represent a significant assault on the family’s religious freedom.(source)
A group of Swiss Muslims has published recommendations for integration in response to a nationwide vote which banned the construction of minarets in Switzerland.
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The Grouping of Swiss Muslims said its recommendations were not only for the attention of federal, cantonal and communal authorities, political parties, the media and business, but “in a large part, for Muslims”.
“Muslims must make more of an effort, but society also needs to open their arms,” one of the group members, Khaldoun Dia-Eddine, told reporters. The group was set up a day after the vote as an informal think tank, but does not claim to be representative of all Muslims in Switzerland.(source)
Voters in Solothurn, north-western Switzerland, voted on Sunday for an amendment to the law requiring police and judicial officers to record the nationalities of offenders and suspects.(source)
The Christian Democratic Party has tabled a motion to introduce specially built villages for asylum-seekers.
The idea is to build three “villages” in Canton Aargau in eastern Switzerland in order to house some 500 asylum-seekers.
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But the far-right Swiss People’s Party thinks that such a system would create the wrong incentives for would-be asylum seekers, as it could make asylum in Switzerland even more attractive.
Others consider the plans for the villages to be similar to a kind of apartheid.(source)
The National Council has voted by 128 votes to 51 in favour of the the Federal Council’s tougher measures to combat forced marriages and marriages under age 18.
The measures would apply equally whether the marriage ceremony takes place within Swiss borders or in another country, and whether the marriage is a heterosexual or homosexual union.(source)
The Council of Europe’s human rights chief has called for an overhaul of Swiss anti-discrimination law and policy.
Intolerance and racism are “dangerously on the rise”, the commissioner for human rights, Thomas Hammarberg, said after a four-day review of Swiss policies and practices.
The review was part of the Council of Europe’s ongoing assessments of the human rights situation in member states. The last such Swiss review was in 2004 and this time around it paid particular attention to how Switzerland was fighting racism and xenophobia.(source)
The far-right Swiss People's Party, the country's largest, on Monday accused the government of inaction and abuses in dealing with a surge of asylum seekers.
"The number of asylum applications is exploding, crime increases, the costs of asylum progressing from year to year," the SVP said in a statement, lamenting that processing takes up to four years.
"The Swiss asylum policy is now marked by abuses, absurdities and by inaction and confusion," the party said.(source)
