In November 2009, Swiss voters went to a referendum on the question of whether the construction of minarets on mosques should be banned. A campaign, spearheaded by the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), elicited a backlash with 57.5% per cent of voters approving the ban.
According to news reports, ‘[a]fter the official results were known, far-right politicians celebrated, while the government sought to assure the Muslim minority that a ban on minarets was “not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture” (Al-Jazeera).
Not unlike the contemporary struggles taking place in Western Sydney and its outskirts, architecture and zoning laws have become the fields in which questions of culture, religion, race, place and visibility are being contested in the public space, with dominant groups organising at the local level to assert cultural supremacy over ‘their’ suburbs.
More to come…
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