One of the more colorful Muslim figures in Switzerland making the media rounds the past few months is Aziz Osmanoglu of Basel, who was recently on trial for hate speech charges.  The court case was based on Osmanoglu’s statements made to a Swiss TV show, which essentially added up to saying that it was “Sharia-compliant” […]

Certain topics related to Muslims seem to go on and on like broken records in European countries. If it isn’t headscarves, it is swimming lessons (like these stories from Germany, Finland, and Norway).  This spring, a story about yet another Muslim family refusing swimming lessons made headlines in Switzerland.  In Basel, the families of five […]

The Swiss political and media landscape is charged with loaded images of Muslim women.  The French side of Swiss media (namely, in newspapers like Le Temps) usually presents a balanced view of Muslim women, and television shows are of a decent quality, especially compared to television in the U.S. So I had no reason to […]

On November 28th, the Swiss voted in one of their many referendums. The topic of this referendum was the deportation of criminal foreigners. This seems innocent enough, but the Swiss, at least for one local party, found a way to give it an anti-female anti-Islam twist.  Sadly, this initiative, spearheaded (as usual) by the Swiss […]

Last month, Swiss voters approved a ban on the construction of mosque minarets. It’s worth reminding everyone that among the 150 mosques built in Switzerland, only four used to have a minaret. Four too many, according to the right-wing Swiss People’s Party and 57% of the Swiss voters. Unlike other European countries, Switzerland has no […]