SWITZERLAND Andreas Tunger-Zanetti Introduction
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SWITZERLAND Andreas Tunger-Zanetti1 Introduction “Swiss feel threatened by Islam” was the headline of the Sunday tabloid newspaper Sonntags-Blick on 27 August 2017.2 The claim was supported by a survey and can be seen as expressing in a nutshell a widespread perception in Switzerland. A much more nuanced picture was shown a few days earlier by the Religionsmonitor, a much more comprehensive survey by the German Bertelsmann Foundation, aptly condensed into the title “Integrated, but not accepted?”3 While the article under the first headline explicitly makes reference to unacceptable speeches in some mosques and to the radicalisation of young Muslims, the second expresses a broader range of issues. For Muslims and Islam in Switzerland, the year 2017 was marked by a constant oscillation between these two poles of a gloomy picture prevalent in media reporting, on the one hand, and an inconspicuous normality, on the other. The debate on “radicalisation”, supposed hate speech and Islamist activities, was stoked by a few new cases, such as that of a Libyan imam in Biel-Bienne. Regularly, proposals in the political debate asking, for example, for a stricter control of imams and the financing of mosques, are quick to follow, and with this the “burqa ban initiative” was successfully launched. The combination of a representative 1 Andreas Tunger-Zanetti is the coordinator of the Centre for Research on Religion at the University of Lucerne. 2 Faki, Sermîn, and Florian Blumer, “Schweizer fühlen sich vom Islam bedroht”, Sonntagsblick, 27 August 2017, pp. 2-3. 3 Halm, Dirk, and Martina Sauer, Muslime in Europa: integriert, aber nicht akzeptiert? (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2017), https://www.bertelsmann- stiftung.de/de/publikationen/publikation/did/muslime-in-europa/, accessed 22 April 2018. democracy alongside the high participation of citizens through direct-democratic processes in Switzerland, offers citizens the chance to overturn government policy and parliamentary decisions, or to pressurise it towards a desired course indirectly by initiating a referendum. At the same time, in the absence of a constitutional court, there is no judicial institution in the country with the competence to cancel articles of law which are contrary to European and international human rights conventions. At the same time, the political system offers local testing grounds for policy, that is attentively watched by the larger confederation. For example, the small canton of Glarus in 2017 refused to introduce a “burqa ban” on its territory, after the canton of Ticino had opted for a ban in 2013. Public authorities and judicial courts continue to pursue policies less unsettled than public opinion as, for example, in the case of the controversial question of how to treat groups of young men distributing copies of the Qur’an for free in the street. Public Debates Extremism, real or supposed, has been the major topic of political and media debates in Switzerland in 2017. Voices in the debate rarely distinguish between criminal or other illegal action, and opinions or behaviour that may seem unacceptable but are still within the law. As in previous years the an-Nur mosque in the outskirts of the industrial city of Winterthur (canton of Zurich) continued to produce newspaper headlines as a hotspot of jihadi sympathisers, with at least seven young people having left to join armed groups, mainly in Syria and Iraq. The young imam, an asylum seeker of Ethiopian nationality, had been arrested with others on 2 November 2016 and stood trial on 23 November 2017. He was found guilty of incitement to use violence against Muslims who do not pray in the mosque community.4 He was sentenced conditionally to 18 months in prison, but put in custody for deportation since the authorities had rejected his request for asylum. The police raid on the mosque on 2 November 2016 was followed by a second raid on 21 February 2017, when the police arrested nine adults and one minor. They are charged of having assaulted, injured, bullied and threatened two mosque-attendees whom they suspected of having provided a journalist with recordings of the imam’s hate speech.5 By August 2017, all of them were released and awaiting trial. The mosque itself was shut down by the an-Nur association itself, which had been unable to find a new premises after the owner of the prayer hall had terminated the rental contract.6 A new case of an imam delivering a possibly radical speech was published in August by Kurt Pelda, the investigative journalist who had set in motion the Winterthur case, jointly with Swiss TV. The reports dealt with Abu Ramadan, a Libyan who came to Switzerland in 1998 and occasionally officiates in the ar- Rahman mosque in Biel-Bienne. He is quoted by the media as asking God in a prayer to “destroy the enemies of our religion, the Jews, the Christians and the Hindus and the Russians and the Shia”.7 A dispute arose about the appropriate translation and interpretation of his speech, given in Arabic.8 That Abu Ramadan had lived 4 Baumgartner, Fabian, “120 Sekunden Hass”, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24 November 2017, p. 17. 5 A detailed reconstruction of the events is offered by Knellwolf, Thomas, “Todesangst in der Moschee”, Tages-Anzeiger, 19 August 2017, p. 35. 6 Müller, André, and Florian Schoop, “Anklage gegen neun Mitglieder der ehemaligen An-Nur- Moschee”, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2 February 2018, p. 18. 7 Pelda, Kurt, “Hassprediger hetzt gegen Christen und Juden”, Tages-Anzeiger, 23 August 2017, p. 5; “Sozialhilfe für Hassprediger: Radikaler Imam lebt vom Staat”, SRF, “Rundschau”, 23 August 2017; https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/rundschau/video/sozialhilfe-fuer-hassprediger-radikaler-imam-lebt-vom- staat?id=315c1839-494f-40c7-a429-f359bdc5c8d9, accessed 22 April 2018. 8 Baumann, Michael, and Philipp Gut, “In den Mund gelegt”, Die Weltwoche, 7 September 2017, p. 22- 23; Islamischer Zentralrat Schweiz, “Ausführliche Stellungnahme zur Polemik gegen Shaykh Abu Ramadan”, n.d.; http://www.izrs.ch/ausfuehrliche-stellungnahme-zur-polemik-gegen-shaykh-abu- ramadan.html, accessed 22 April 2018. completely on social security benefits for 13 years and had received nearly 600,000 Swiss Francs, created a much more significant public stir. Subsequently, more instigative speeches of Abu Ramadan came to light.9 The prosecutor is examining the case. On 22 February 2017, police in the canton of Ticino arrested a 32-year old Turkish and Swiss citizen on suspicion of recruiting fighters for Jabhat al-Nusra. The accused agreed to an abridged legal procedure, admitting guilt for receiving a reduced sentence.10 On 7 November 2017 Swiss police in the Romandy, and French police, arrested ten members of a suspected terror group. One of them, a 27-year old Swiss convert of Croatian origin, is thought to be the head of the group, which formulated several terror plots for an attack in Switzerland.11 The dilemma of a liberal society with Islamist activists in it has been most tangible in the debate about the “Lies!” campaign (“Read!”, referring to Qur’an 96:1). Typically small groups of young bearded men would set up a stand on a street in a Swiss or other European city and offer a free copy of a German or French translation of the Qur’an to passers-by. Their Salafi sympathies are obvious. A number of Swiss jihadis had contact with the “Lies!” campaign before their departure for the Middle East.12 Some voices in the Swiss debate called for a ban on the campaign. The most prominent voice among them has been Mario Fehr, a socialist member of the Government of the Canton of Zurich, and head of its Security Department. On 5 May 2017, Fehr, referring to commissioned legal advice by Markus Rüssli,13 9 Pelda, Kurt, “Uralte antisemitische Klischees”, Tages-Anzeiger, 6 October 2017, p. 5. 10 “Radikaler Islamist bald wieder frei”, Berner Zeitung, 19 August 2017, p. 11. 11 Botti, Dominique, “Verhafteter Westschweizer soll Kopf einer Terrorzelle sein”, Sonntags-Zeitung, 12 November 2017, p. 9. 12 Pelda, Kurt, and Thomas Knellwolf, “Koranverteiler im Radikalisierungslabor”, Tages-Anzeiger, 5 May 2017, p. 19. 13 Rüssli, Markus, Rechtsgutachten zur Verteilung des Korans auf öffentlichem Grund im Rahmen der Aktion «Lies!», erstattet zuhanden der Sicherheitsdirektion des Kantons Zürich, Zürich, 26 April 2017, recommended to the local authorities not to approve requests for setting up stands of the “Lies!” campaign.14 In October the Police Department of the canton of Berne issued a similar recommendation. In the Federal Parliament, MP Walter Wobmann demanded an outright ban of the “Lies!” campaign “and similar organisations”.15 However, the Federal Government rejected the demand on the grounds that there is no sufficient legal basis for this. Moreover, the Federal Intelligence Service stated only in May 2017 that “there is no substantiated evidence that the street campaigns observed in this country promote violent extremist or terrorist activities and thereby threaten internal security. A ban on activities is out of the question, as there is no established structure present in Switzerland and the target of such a ban would be unclear”.16 While the political and legal debates have not yet ended, the street activists have begun to change method: instead of setting up stands they now walk around in teams of two, for which no permission is required, distributing German and French copies of a biography on the Prophet Muhammad instead of the Qur’an.17 From 2016 to 2017 the number of individuals leaving Switzerland to join armed groups in Syria or Iraq rose from 81 to 93, of which 24 are unconfirmed cases. The figure includes all cases since 2001.18 The authorities have registered no departures since 2016. At the same time they estimate around a hundred individuals https://ds.zh.ch/dam/sicherheitsdirektion/direktion/veroeffentlichungen_gs/Rechtsgutachten_%C2%A BLies!%C2%BB.pdf, accessed 22 April 2018.