At Georgetown/On Faith, Katherine Marshall, Co-Chair of the SSRC Religion and International Affairs Advisory Committee, reports on how Swiss society has dealt with the 2009 passage of a referendum to ban construction of new minarets:

After the shock victory of the minaret ban, the analysts reacted in force. More women than men supported the ban but the most significant finding for many was that the ban won in areas where few if any Muslims lived, and it was defeated in the areas where Muslims were concentrated. The conclusion? Fear of the unknown, stirred up by rhetoric of the pro-ban forces, was the major factor explaining support for the ban.

A government official involved in the dialogue cited a poignant example of how knowledge plays into prejudice. Switzerland has a Miss Switzerland but also a Mr. Switzerland who is celebrated all over the country. The winner of the competition in 2009 said that he had voted for the ban; he was against the rampant Islamicization of Switzerland, he said. But after he was invited to attend Friday prayers at a mosque, he had the gumption to state publicly that he had been wrong to oppose minarets, because he realized that the people he met were in fact nice and decent people. The overall sense, in short, was that the more people who knew Muslims, the less fearsome they found both religion and people (a conclusion echoed in the United States and other countries).

Damage control has involved both outreach and reassurance and efforts to improve the flow of information. Switzerland is still trying to explain the vote in international circles. However, while there is a hope that the measure will one day be repealed, for now it is the law of the land.

Read the full article here.