(CNSNews.com) – Supporters of a bid to outlaw minarets in Switzerland have been accused of undermining free expression, but they now accuse their critics of doing the same thing by banning a poster promoting the campaign ahead of a referendum next month.
 
Calling the posters discriminatory, a number of Swiss local authorities have prohibited their display in public locations. The poster depicts a burqa-clad woman alongside a Swiss flag pierced by minarets.
 
A federal anti-racism commission ruled earlier that the posters “incite hatred” by implying that Muslims in Switzerland pose a danger. The Muslim minority, mostly originating from Turkey and the Balkans, is 300,000-strong, accounting for around four percent of the predominantly Christian population.
 
The chairman of the organizing committee for the anti-minaret campaign, Walter Wobmann, told the Swiss news agency SDA on Sunday it planned legal action against the cities and towns that have banned the poster, possibly on the basis of a freedom of speech violation.
 
The referendum was initiated by the conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) which collected a sufficient number of signatures last year under the country’s referendum provisions. If it passes on November 29, the Swiss constitution will be amended to add the line, “the construction of minarets is prohibited.”
 
Although Switzerland holds referendums regularly and on a wide range of issues, the minaret initiative has been especially controversial.
 
The SVP argues that minarets are a “symbol of political power” in a historically Christian country. Noting that many mosques do not have minarets and that they are not a theological requirement in Islam, it says banning them does not therefore impinge on the religious freedom of Swiss Muslims.
 
The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) sees the call to ban minarets as an example of Western “Islamophobia” and anti-Muslim intolerance. Swiss Muslims warn that the initiative will stoke extremism and harm Switzerland’s image in the Islamic world.
 
“Switzerland enjoys an excellent reputation both with governments and people in the Muslim world,” Zurich imam Sakib Halilovic told the Swiss news service swissinfo over the summer. “The supporters of the minaret ban have no idea how much Switzerland’s reputation will suffer,” he said.
 
The minaret campaign is opposed by most Swiss political parties, by mainstream churches, and by government leaders who are worried that the vote may damage relations with a Muslim world sensitive to “Islamophobia.”
 
Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said last week that banning minarets would be discriminatory, run contrary to the principles of the Swiss constitution, and could boost “religious fanatics.” She urged voters to reject the move.
 
Ties with Muslim world
 
The small European nation has gone out of its way to build good relations with leading Islamic countries, and Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey said earlier this month the minaret issue risked upsetting them.
 
Swiss exports to the Arab world were worth more than $7 billion in 2007 while imports exceeded $3 billion, according to statistics kept by the Arab-Swiss Chamber of Commerce. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are among its biggest customers while Libya heads its list of suppliers.
 
Denmark and the Netherlands both found themselves targeted for threats and boycotts in recent years as a result of actions taken by their citizens that angered Muslims.
 
The minaret referendum campaign’s closing stages are coinciding with a drawn-out and damaging unrelated dispute between Switzerland and a key oil supplier in the Islamic world, Libya.

Relations between the two soured in mid-2008 when one of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s sons was arrested with his wife and accused of assaulting two servants in a Geneva hotel. Gaddafi’s retaliation was swift and wide-ranging, and included the freezing of oil shipments, suspension of air links and arrest of two Swiss businessmen.
 
Two months ago Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz traveled to Tripoli to deliver what critics viewed as a demeaning apology. Libya then agreed to allow the two businessmen to leave Libya on September 1. Six weeks later, and despite a Merz-Gaddafi meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, they have still not been released.
 
Switzerland was criticized by the U.S. and Israel last year for signing a $13 billion agreement with Iran to buy Iranian natural gas for the next 25 years. Calmy-Rey also drew flak at home from conservatives for donning a white headscarf during her visit to Iran to finalize the deal.
 
Early this year, Merz was criticized for meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he visited Geneva for a U.N. racism conference dogged by controversy.