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Switzerland Says No to More than Minarets

(Washington Post) Anne Applebaum - The vast majority of Switzerland's 400,000 Muslims are from Turkey and Kosovo, and there is very little evidence that separatist, politically extreme Islam is growing rapidly there. The Swiss, however, read newspapers and watch television. And in recent years separatist and politically extreme forms of Islam have emerged in every European country with a large Muslim population: Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, Sweden. Fear of Islamist extremism shapes all European politics far more than anyone ever acknowledges. As grotesquely unfair as a referendum to ban minarets may have been to hundreds of thousands of ordinary, well-integrated Muslims, I have no doubt that the Swiss voted in favor primarily because they don't have much Islamic extremism - and they don't want any.
2009-12-08 08:19:40
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