Islam in Switzerland

The largest concentration of Muslim population is in the German speaking Swiss plateau. The cantons with more than 5% Muslim population are:[8]

• 8.17%   Basel-Stadt
• 7.72%   Glarus
• 7.63%   Solothurn
• 7.54%   St. Gallen
• 7.14%   Aargau
• 7.02%   Schaffhausen
• 6.51%   Thurgau
• 6.49%   Zürich
• 6.24%   Geneva
• 5.61%   Basel-Landschaft
• 5.22%   Vaud

Geneva is the only non-German-speaking canton where the Muslim population (6.24%) is slightly above the average (5.40%).[8] Another remarkable demographic feature in comparison to other European countries is the relatively equal distribution throughout the country[9] (compare Islam in the United Kingdom). No administrative unit has more than 8.55%[10] of Muslim population, and no town or village more than 16.8%.[11] The lowest percentage of Muslims in a canton is 1.82%[12] (the Italian-speaking Ticino).

88.3% of Muslims in Switzerland are foreigners (56.4% from former Yugoslavia, mostly Bosniaks, and Albanians from Kosovo), 20.2% from Turkey and 6% from Africa (3.4% from North Africa).[13] 10,000 of the 400,000 Muslims could be converts.[14]

In the 10th century, Arabs and Amazighs from their Mediterranean Fraxinet base settled in the Valais for a few decades. They occupied the Great St. Bernard Pass and even managed to reach as far as St. Gallen to the north and Raetia in the east.[15]

Islam was virtually absent from Switzerland until the 20th century. It appeared with the beginning of significant immigration to Europe, after World War II. A first mosque was built in Zürich in 1963 by the Ahmadiyya community. Muslim presence during the 1950s and 1960s was mostly due to the presence of international diplomats and rich Saudi tourists in Geneva.

Substantial Muslim immigration began in the 1970s, and accelerated dramatically over the 1980s to 1990s. In 1980, there were 56,600 Muslims in Switzerland (0.9% of total population). This ratio quintupled over the following thirty years, notably due to the immigration from Former Yugoslavia during the 1990s Yugoslav War. While the Muslim demographics is still growing rapidly, the rate of growth has decreased after the early 1990s. The growth rate corresponded to a factor of 2.7 over the 1980s (10% per annum), a factor of 2.0 over the 1990s (7% p.a.), and a factor of about 1.6 over the 2000s (5% p.a.).[16]

The burka was outlawed in the canton of Ticino after a citizen initiative to hold a referendum. With 65% in favour of a ban and it was ruled that the ban was constitutional, the ban took effect in July 2016. Those who violate the law face a fine of up to CHF 10,000.[17] One of the primary figures behind this burka ban is now attempting to ban Muslims from praying in public.[18]

In 2017, an Imam was charged for inciting violence by calling a sermon for Muslims who refused to pray to be burned alive.[19]

In 2018, a Muslim couple was denied citizenship when they refused to answer questions from members of the Lausanne naturalisation board if they were asked by people of the opposite sex. Their behaviour was found to disrespect a fundamental principle of the Swiss constitution, equality between men and women.[20]

In September 2018, a ban on face-covering veils was approved with a 67% vote in favour in the canton of St Gallen. The largest Islamic community organisation in Switzerland, the Islamic Central Council, recommended that Muslim women continue to cover their faces.[21]

Swiss Muslim organizations begin to form in the 1980s. An umbrella organization (GIOS, Gemeinschaft islamischer Organisationen der Schweiz) was formed in Zürich in 1989. Numerous organizations were formed during the 1990s to 2000s, including

• 1994 Organisation Muslime und Musliminnen der Schweiz
• 1995 Vereinigung Islamischer Organisationen Zürich (VIOZ), Zurich
• 1997 Basler Muslim Kommission, Basle
• 2000 Koordination Islamischer Organisationen Schweiz (KIOS), Berne
• 2002 Vereinigung islamischer Organisationen des Kantons Luzern (VIOKL), Lucerne
• 2003 Dachverband islamischer Gemeinden der Ostschweiz und des Fürstentums Liechtenstein
• 2006 Föderation Islamischer Dachorganisationen in der Schweiz (FIDS)
• 2009 Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS; German Islamischer Zentralrat Schweiz IZRS), Berne. IZRS is a comparatively minor organisation (with an estimated 960 members in 2010) but has a disproportionate media presence because of its radical Salafist orientation and because a disproportionate number of its members (an estimated 10%) are native Swiss converts.[22]

Mosque of the Turkish cultural association in Wangen bei Olten.

It is estimated that there are 260 mosques and prayer rooms with connected services in Switzerland.[23] Switzerland has the second lowest mosques per Muslim inhabitant, with about one mosque to every 4000 Muslims in Switzerland.[24]

There are two Swiss mosques which predate 1980 and the rapid increase of immigration of Muslims from the Balkans and Turkey over the following decades. Today, there are numerous mosques and prayer rooms across the country, predominantly in the urban parts of the Swiss plateau.[25]

In 2007 the Bern city council rejected plans to build one of the largest Islamic cultural centers in Europe.[26]

Four Swiss mosques have minarets, there is a mosque in Zurich, a mosque in Geneva, a mosque in Winterthur, a mosque in Wangen bei Olten. The latter was erected in 2009 following several years of political and legal disputes. In the wake of the Wangen minaret controversy, a popular initiative was passed with 57.5% of the popular vote in November 2009, introducing a ban on the construction of new minarets. The four existing minarets are not affected by the ban.[27][28] Although the Swiss People's Party won the poll, the campaign was rocked by the conversion to Islam of Daniel Streich, a council member from the party. Streich left the SPP in opposition to their campaign against new minarets. The referendum also prompted concerns from other countries, with the perception that the Swiss electorate was increasingly shifting towards the right.

In a 2018 survey conducted by Switzerland's Federal Statistics Office, 29% of Swiss respondents said they mistrusted Islam and 11% said they mistrusted Islamic followers.[29] Comparatively, in 2016, 14% of Swiss respondents said that they mistrusted Islamic followers.[30]

• Religion in Switzerland
• Turks in Switzerland
• Arabs in Switzerland

• Marcel Stüssi MODELS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: Switzerland, the United States, and Syria by Analytical, Methodological, and Eclectic Representation, 375 ff. (Lit 2012)., by Marcel Stüssi, research fellow at the University of Lucerne.

• Swiss Exile: European Muslim Congress, 1935 by Martin Kramer.
• Islam in Switzerland
• Centre Al Hikma de Lausanne - Réseau social