Anti-Muslim advert stirs outrage

Swissinfo.org - 9/10/2004 9:18:00 AM GMT

The Muslim community in Switzerland and the Federal Commission against Racism denounced a newly published controversial advert about Muslim birth rates.

However, they wont raise an official complaint against the advert, which was placed by a group linked to the rightwing Swiss People’s Party.

The advert is published two weeks before the country is due to vote on easing restrictions on Swiss citizenship for second- and third-generation foreigners.

“Thanks to automatic naturalizations – Muslims soon a majority?” screamed the advert, which appeared in the weekend editions of several Swiss newspapers.

The ad says that the number of Muslims in Switzerland was doubling every ten years, and that they would make up 72% of the population by 2040.

The advert was published by the “Committee against Mass Naturalizations”, which is using the address of Ulrich Schlüer, a People’s Party parliamentarian.

However, the People’s Party has denied responsibility for the advert, saying that it does not finance the group concerned. Yet, the party did welcome the advert.

“We think this advert is positive because it’s important to inform the population ahead of the vote on September 26. It’s helping us in our campaign,” said People's Party spokesman Roman Jäggi.

Farhad Afshar, a professor at Bern University and a leading member of Switzerland’s Muslim community, says that best thing is to challenge the advert with political arguments.

“But we Muslims have been hurt by this advert,” said Afshar, who is also head of the Coordination of Islamic Organisations in Switzerland.

The Federal Commission against Racism has also decided not to make a complaint. But Georg Kreis, the organisation’s president, described the advert as offensive and said that it should be investigated by the authorities.

“They must find out whether the anti-racism laws have been breached,” he said.

Unfair

The Federal Immigration, Integration and Emigration Office, stated that the figures presented in the advert are not accurate, and don’t give the true picture of the Muslim population in Switzerland.

The advert shows a chart with official statistics for 1990 and 2000, and then “projects” its own statistics for the period up until 2040.

“They say that every ten years you will have double the number of Muslims, so that by 2050 you will have more Muslims than inhabitants in Switzerland – that’s absurd,” the office’s Mario Tuor said.

Tuor agrees that the Muslim population in Switzerland had doubled between 1990 and 2000, due to the arrival of many immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, yet he disagrees with the statistics given in the ad.