Rapporten Situasjonen til muslimer i Sveits underkjenner så til de grader problemene med integreringen av muslimer i landet at den latterliggjøres som en ”casestudie i politisk korrekthet”, skriver Soeren Kern.
Rapporten ble således ikke overraskende bestilt av forkjempere for multikulturalismen blant de folkevalgte rett etter at en et flertall av det sveitsiske folket i en folkeavstemning i november 2009 sa nei https://www.rights.no/2009/12/europa-sier-nei-til-minareter/ til at det bygges flere minareter. Den politiske eliten hadde kjempet hardt mot forbud, med argument om ”fred mellom religionene” og at et forbud ville hindre integrering. Etter at forbudet var en realitet lanserte Regjeringen en bred innsats for å ”utdanne” den sveitsiske befolkningen gjennom pro-islamsk forskning.
Nevnte rapport estimerer at det bor 350 – 400 000 muslimer I Sveits, some r 5 prosent av en befolkning på åtte millioner innbyggere. Rapporten slår fast at kun 12 – 15 prosent av muslimene besøker jevnlig en moské og at muslimer således er lite religiøse. Det største hinderet for integrering er ikke religion, slås det fast, men språk. Alvorlige forhold knyttet til islam ses ”bare i eksepsjonelle saker”. Rapporten slår fast at den store majoriteten muslimer er fullt integrert i det sveitsiske samfunnet, at islam representerer ingen spesielle problem i dagliglivet i Sveits, og at islam sjeldent medfører sosiale konflikter. På dette grunnlaget har Regjeringen bestemt at det ikke er nødvendig med videre tiltak for å sikre integrering av muslimer, heter det.
Men på den andre siden, sier rapporten at muslimer ofte føler seg diskriminert og at Regjeringen derfor ytterligere må styrke kunnskapen blant sveitserne om ”islamofobi”. Muslimske “ofre” trenger også bedre informasjon om deres juridiske rettigheter i antidiskrimineringsloverket.
Konklusjonene tas vel imot av muslimske ledere. Som Det sentrale sveitsiske islamske rådet, en radikal salafistorganisasjon som jobber for å implementere sharia i landet, der det heter at rapporten kan ”redusere den omfattende frykten i den sveitsiske befolkningen”. Nå er det slik at samme gruppe er under radaren til sikkerhetstjenesten grunnet ”antikonstitusjonelle aktiviteter”. Samme gruppe tar også til orde for å bekjempe ”spredningen av islamofobi”.
Rapporten har fått mang en sveitser til å riste på hodet i mistro, da det er en utbredt oppfatning om at tvillingtemaene multikulturalisme og islam er langt mer problematisk enn den rosenrøde beskrivelsen blant ledende politikere. En ny studie viser nemlig at halvparten av sveitserne ser islam som en trussel mot landet og 58 prosent mener islam ikke hører hjemme i vesten. Totredjedeler mener islam er en kilde til konflikt. Kanskje ikke så underlig, all den tid det er i Sveits som i Norge: knapt en eneste dag uten at media formidler en negativ hendelse knyttet til islam/muslimer.
Denne måneden bled et eksempelvis avdekket at over totredjedeler av elevene ved 80 skoler i Zürich ikke snakker tysk. Ved en skole Sihlfeld-distriktet i Zürich har kun en elev tysk som morsmål. I Basel er situasjonen så alarmerende at det nå snakkes om kvoteringer og bussing” for å unngå at skoler har mindre enn 30 prosent elver som har tysk som morsmål.
Tidligere i denne måneden falt en kjennelse i Høyesterett som sa at en 14 år gammel muslimsk jente ikke kunne unndra seg svømmeundervisning fordi læreren av en mann. Foreldrene hadde søkt om fritak, mens skolen nektet.
I april kom det frem at kriminalitetsraten har doblet seg siden den arabiske våren, og fra flere politiske hold kreves det nå at DNA av asylsøkere fra Nord-Afrika og Midtøsten skal lagres for å avhjelpe politietterforskning, og i mars kom det frem at et økende antall muslimer rekrutteres i Sveits til jihadisme, fotsetter Kern.
In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Berner Oberländer on March 11, the head of Swiss intelligence, Markus Seiler, said, «What worries us, is that there are more and more people in our country who are recruiting Swiss people for jihad.» More than two dozen Swiss Muslims are thought to have travelled to Syria to join the fighting there.
In February, the Vimentis polling platform, in its annual survey for 2013, found that immigration is by far the top issue of concern for Swiss voters. It also found that nearly 70% of Swiss voters favor increasing the number of police officers in the country due to rising levels of insecurity.
In January, Swiss authorities said they are bracing for a massive increase in asylum seekers in 2013. The government had budgeted for 23,000 asylum applications for 2013, but that figure is forecast to hit 30,000. Costs to deal with political refugees are expected to explode to 1.43 billion francs ($1.5 billion).
In November 2012, the chief of police for the Swiss canton of Zug, Beat Villiger, said Switzerland needs at least 1,500 more police officers to fight a crime wave perpetrated by foreign gangs. Villiger said: «The professionalization of criminals in the areas of pickpocketing, tricks and skimming [from ATM machines using duplicate credit card readers and wireless cameras] is rising.» He also called for special prisons for failed asylum seekers and increased video surveillance in trains. The number of robberies and assaults on Swiss trains has skyrocketed to such an extent that the Swiss government recently opted to equip transport police with firearms.
Also in November, Swiss police arrested several members of a Muslim gang called Jamahat who forced adolescents from disadvantaged families in the cities of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds to convert to Islam and then to sell drugs. The Jamahat gang is made up of young Muslim men originally from Afghanistan, Chechnya and the former Yugoslavia. According to police, the group «is attempting to radicalize its activities by seeking to impose — by physical and psychological violence — a monopoly on the sale of marijuana in our region.»
In nearby Lausanne, the imam of a local mosque was accused of polygamy after he married a Swiss woman who converted to Islam. Both the imam and the woman were already legally married to other spouses. The polygamous marriage was performed in a religious ceremony; however, in Switzerland only civil marriages are officially recognized by the state.
In October, Muslims complained about «offensive» advertising by Swiss Airlines. The campaign included large-format posters depicting an airplane with the red and white cross of the Swiss flag painted on the tail fin, accompanied by the slogan «Cross is Trump» [Kreuz ist Trumpf, a play on words referring to card games]. Muslims were outraged by what they said was a «Christian slogan used as a provocation and attack against Islam.» Swiss Airlines said its advertising campaign carries no religious or political message.
Also in October, a sixth grade boy at a school in Winterthur was forced to change schools after Muslim children repeatedly pressured him to convert to Islam. The problems began after one of the boys, whose father is an imam, tried to force the boy to pray to Allah. After the boy refused, the Muslim child began ridiculing his Christian faith. Soon thereafter, other Muslim classmates (14 of the 19 boys in the sixth grade class are Muslim) began harassing the boy, even calling for him to be killed for refusing to bow the knee to Allah. Muslim children at the same school have also sought to enforce Islamic dress codes.
That same month, a gym teacher at the André-Chavanne school in Geneva prevented female students from using a track field on Fridays because of complaints from a nearby mosque. When outraged parents confronted the teacher, she justified her action by saying she was concerned for the girls’ safety because Muslims had previously shouted insults at them.
In September, the Swiss House of Representatives voted against banning Muslim women from wearing burkas in public spaces. Parliamentarians who voted against the burka ban argued it would «encourage negative opinions of Switzerland» and «hurt tourism from Muslim countries.»
In August, a study conducted by a pair of academics from the University of Neuchâtel found that at least 1,400 Muslim women in Switzerland have been the victims of forced marriages. Most forced marriages involve Muslim immigrants from the Balkans, Turkey and Sri Lanka.
In June, Swiss police warned that radical Muslim groups are using Switzerland as a base from which to promote jihad in Europe and beyond. Islamists in Switzerland are providing jihadists with logistical support, and also stepping up their use of Internet websites there to spread Islamic propaganda as well as to incite their supporters to commit acts of terrorism and violence. In response to the rising threat from radical Islam, Swiss police launched a new specialist IT research department to intensify efforts to monitor jihadist websites and their operators.
In February, leading Islamic groups in Switzerland announced plans to establish their own parliament that will enable all of the country’s Muslims to «speak with one voice,» and that their new «parliament» will be based on the principles of Islamic Sharia law. Swiss analysts, according to an exposé published by the newspaper Basler Zeitung, say the initiative is an effort to establish a «parallel» legislative body in Switzerland that will be a mouthpiece for Islamic fundamentalists who are seeking to impose Sharia law in the country.
In January, the extremist Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (IZRS) announced that it was trying to raise money from countries in the Persian Gulf to build a 20-million Swiss franc ($21 million) mega-mosque in Bern. With three floors, the planned mosque would be the biggest in Switzerland. In addition to a prayer room for more than 500 worshippers, the building would have conference and training rooms, shops, underground parking and a garden.
In September 2011, an immigrant group based in Bern called for the emblematic white cross to be removed from the Swiss national flag because as a Christian symbol it «no longer corresponds to today’s multicultural Switzerland.» In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung, a Muslim activist said the cross has a Christian background, and while the Christian roots of Switzerland should be respected, «it is necessary to separate church and state» because «Switzerland today has a great religious and cultural diversity. One has to ask if the State wants to continue building up a symbol in which many people no longer believe.»