Switzerland has voted to ban the construction of Minarets in a national referendum.

They have an excellent system in Switzerland – one that Lord Pearson has made a key policy for UKIP – where a petition with 100,000 signatures calling for a referendum has to be acted on by the government.  This particular referendum was arranged by the Swiss Peoples’ Party.

The Swiss government is opposed to the ban, mainly because they’re shitting themselves that the “muslim community” is going to kick off.  The Swiss Justice Minister, speaking on behalf of approximately nobody but herself, said it’s “not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture”.

Bizarrely, Amnesty International said that the ban on minarets is a violation of muslims’ rights to freedom of expression.  Presumably Amnesty International can point to the bit in the Koran that compels muslims to build big pointy towers painted in garish colours?  Or alternatively they could just shut the fuck up and stop interfering in the democratic process.

A self-appointed muslim leader in Switzerland, Tamir Hadjipolu, claims that the ban on building pointy towers will lead to the “muslim community” living in fear.

There are 400,000 muslims in Switzerland and Islam is the second largest religion in the country, yet there are only four minarets in Switzerland and almost every application to build a new one is rejected.  The ban is unlikely to achieve much other than a ban on something that is already effectively banned anyway but the important thing is that it’s what the Swiss people want.

The bad news is, you’re going to have to wait until we get a UKIP government to get the same access to democracy that the Swiss get and unless people start voting for who they believe in rather than the party they think has the best chance of beating the party they most want to lose we’re going to be stuck with the current shamocracy for some time.