Islam in Switzerland - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

According to the Confederate census

Census

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

of 2001, a total number of 310,807 Muslims

Islam

Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

were living in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

which made up 4.26% of the total population. In 2009 there were an estimated 400,000 Muslims in Switzerland, accounting to around 5% of the total population.

Demographics

The largest concentration of Muslim population is in the German

Swiss German

Swiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are grouped together with Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg...

speaking Swiss plateau

Swiss plateau

The Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau constitutes one of the three major landscapes in Switzerland alongside the Jura mountains and the Swiss Alps. It covers about 30% of the Swiss surface...

. The cantons with more than 5% Muslim population are:

6.72% Basel-Stadt
6.50% Glarus
Canton of Glarus
The Canton of Glarus is a canton in east central Switzerland. The capital is Glarus.The population speaks a variety of Alemannic German.The majority of the population identifies as Christian, about evenly split between the Protestant and Catholic confessions.-History:According to legend, the...
6.13% St. Gallen
Canton of St. Gallen
The Canton of St. Gallen is a canton of Switzerland. St. Gallen is located in the north east of Switzerland. It covers an area of 2,026 km², and has a population of . , the population included 97,461 foreigners, or about 20.9% of the total population. The capital is St. Gallen. Spelling...
5.94% Thurgau
Thurgau
Thurgau is a northeast canton of Switzerland. The population, , is . In 2007, there were a total of 47,390 who were resident foreigners. The capital is Frauenfeld.-History:...
5.80% Schaffhausen
Canton of Schaffhausen
The Canton of is a canton of Switzerland. The principal city and capital of the canton is Schaffhausen.- History:Schaffhausen was a city-state in the Middle Ages, documented to have struck its own coins starting in 1045. It was then known as Villa Scafhusun. Around 1049 Count Eberhard von...
5.49% Aargau
Aargau
Aargau is one of the more northerly cantons of Switzerland. It comprises the lower course of the river Aare, which is why the canton is called Aar-gau .-History:...
5.39% Solothurn
Canton of Solothurn
Solothurn is a canton of Switzerland. It is located in the northwest of Switzerland. The capital is Solothurn.-History:The territory of the canton comprises land acquired by the capital...
5.33% Zürich
Canton of Zürich
The Canton of Zurich has a population of . The canton is located in the northeast of Switzerland and the city of Zurich is its capital. The official language is German, but people speak the local Swiss German dialect called Züritüütsch...

Geneva

Canton of Geneva

The Republic and Canton of Geneva is the French speaking westernmost canton or state of Switzerland, surrounded on almost all sides by France. As is the case in several other Swiss cantons The Republic and Canton of Geneva is the French speaking westernmost canton or state of Switzerland,...

is the only non-German-speaking canton where the Muslim population is slightly above the average (4,35). Another remarkable demographic feature in comparison to other European countries is the relatively equal distribution throughout the country (compare Islam in the United Kingdom

Islam in the United Kingdom

Islam has been present in the United Kingdom since its formation in 1707, though it was not legally recognised until the Trinitarian Act in 1812. Today it is the second largest religion in the country with estimates suggesting that by 2010 the total Muslim population had reached 2.869 million.The...

). No administrative unit has more than 8.55% of Muslim population, and no town or village more than 16.8%. The lowest percentage of Muslims in a canton is 1.82% (the Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

-speaking Ticino

Ticino

Canton Ticino or Ticino is the southernmost canton of Switzerland. Named after the Ticino river, it is the only canton in which Italian is the sole official language...

).

88.3 % of Muslims in Switzerland are foreigners (56.4 % from former Yugoslavia

Former Yugoslavia

The former Yugoslavia is a term used to describe the present day states which succeeded the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia....

(mostly from Kosovo

Kosovo

Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...

), 20.2 % from Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

and 6 % from Africa (3.4 % from North Africa). 10,000 of the 400,000 Muslims could be converts.

History

In the 10th century, Arabs and Berbers from their Mediterranean Fraxinet

Fraxinet

Fraxinet or Fraxinetum was the site of a tenth-century fortress established by Saracen pirates at modern La Garde-Freinet, near Saint-Tropez, in Provence...

base settled in the Valais

Valais

The Valais is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland in the southwestern part of the country, around the valley of the Rhône from its headwaters to Lake Geneva, separating the Pennine Alps from the Bernese Alps. The canton is one of the drier parts of Switzerland in its central Rhône valley...

for a few decades. They occupied the Great St. Bernard Pass

Great St. Bernard Pass

Great St. Bernard Pass is the third highest road pass in Switzerland. It connects Martigny in the Canton of Valais in Switzerland to Aosta in Italy. It is the lowest pass lying on the ridge between the two highest summits of the Alps, Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa...

and even managed to reach as far as St. Gallen

St. Gallen

St. Gallen is the capital of the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. It evolved from the hermitage of Saint Gall, founded in the 7th century. Today, it is a large urban agglomeration and represents the center of eastern Switzerland. The town mainly relies on the service sector for its economic...

to the north and Raetia

Raetia

Raetia was a province of the Roman Empire, named after the Rhaetian people. It was bounded on the west by the country of the Helvetii, on the east by Noricum, on the north by Vindelicia, on the west by Cisalpine Gaul and on south by Venetia et Histria...

in the east.

Islam was virtually absent from Switzerland until the 20th century.
It appeared with the beginning of significant immigration to Europe

Immigration to Europe

Immigration to Europe increased from the 1980s onward, as a result of people from developing countries wanting to escape war, oppression, natural disasters or poverty. Some EU countries saw a dramatic growth in immigration after World War II until the 1970s. Most European nations today have...

, after World War II.
A first mosque was built in Zürich in 1963 by the Ahmadiyya

Ahmadiyya

Ahmadiyya is an Islamic religious revivalist movement founded in India near the end of the 19th century, originating with the life and teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad , who claimed to have fulfilled the prophecies about the world reformer of the end times, who was to herald the Eschaton as...

community. Muslim presence during the 1950s and 1960s was mostly due to the presence of international diplomats and rich Saudi tourists in Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

.

Substantial Muslim immigration began in the 1970s, and accelerated dramatically over the 1980s to 1990s. In 1980, there were 56,600 Muslims in Switzerland (0.9% of total population). This ratio quintupled over the following thirty years, notably due to the immigration from Former Yugoslavia

Former Yugoslavia

The former Yugoslavia is a term used to describe the present day states which succeeded the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia....

during the 1990s Yugoslav War.
While the Muslim demographics is still growing rapidly, the rate of growth has decreased after the early 1990s. The growth rate corresponded to a factor of 2.7 over the 1980s (10% per annum), a factor of 2.0 over the 1990s (7% p.a.), and a factor of about 1.6 over the 2000s (5% p.a.).

Organizations

Swiss Muslim organizations begin to form in the 1980s.
An umbrella organization (GIOS, Gemeinschaft islamischer Organisationen der Schweiz) was formed in Zürich in 1989.
Numerous organizations were formed during the 1990s to 2000s, including

1994 Organisation Muslime und Musliminnen der Schweiz
1997 Basler Muslim Kommission, Basle
1997 Vereinigung Islamischer Organisationen Zürich (VIOZ), Zurich
2000 Koordination Islamischer Organisationen Schweiz (KIOS), Berne
2002 Vereinigung islamischer Organisationen des Kantons Luzern (VIOKL), Lucerne
2003 Dachverband islamischer Gemeinden der Ostschweiz und des Fürstentums Liechtenstein
2006 Föderation Islamischer Dachorganisationen in der Schweiz (FIDS)
2009 Islamischer Zentralrat Schweiz (IZRS), Berne

Mosques

There are two Swiss mosques which predate 1980 and the rapid increase of immigration of Muslims from the Balkans and Turkey over the following decades. These are the Ahmadiyya

Ahmadiyya Muslim Community

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is the larger of two communities that arose from the Ahmadiyya movement founded in 1889 in India by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian . The original movement split into two factions soon after the death of the founder...

mosque in Zurich, built in 1963 and also boasting the first minaret built in Switzerland, and a Saudi-financed mosque in Geneva, built in 1978.
Today, there are numerous further mosques and prayer rooms across the country, predominantly in the urban parts of the Swiss plateau

Swiss plateau

The Swiss Plateau or Central Plateau constitutes one of the three major landscapes in Switzerland alongside the Jura mountains and the Swiss Alps. It covers about 30% of the Swiss surface...

.

In 2007 the Bern city council rejected plans to build one of the largest Islamic cultural centers in Europe.

Four Swiss mosques have minaret

Minaret

A minaret مناره , sometimes مئذنه) is a distinctive architectural feature of Islamic mosques, generally a tall spire with an onion-shaped or conical crown, usually either free standing or taller than any associated support structure. The basic form of a minaret includes a base, shaft, and gallery....

s, besides the Zurich and Geneva mosques mentioned above, these are a mosque in Winterthur

Winterthur

Winterthur is a city in the canton of Zurich in northern Switzerland. It has the country's sixth largest population with an estimate of more than 100,000 people. In the local dialect and by its inhabitants, it is usually abbreviated to Winti...

and a mosque in Wangen bei Olten

Wangen bei Olten

Wangen bei Olten is a municipality in the district of Olten in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland.-Minaret controversy:The construction of a high minaret in Wangen in 2005 led to a constitutional ban on their construction on 29 November 2009....

. The latter was erected in 2009 following several years of political and legal disputes. In the wake of the Wangen minaret controversy

Minaret controversy in Switzerland

The minaret controversy in Switzerland refers to construction of minarets, which has been subject to legal and political controversy in Switzerland during the 2000s and a Swiss referendum regarding this issue. In a November 2009 referendum, a constitutional amendment banning the construction of new...

, a popular initiative was passed with 57.5% of the popular vote in November 2009, introducing a ban on the construction of new minarets. The four existing minarets are not affected by the ban.

External links

Swiss Exile: European Muslim Congress, 1935 by Martin Kramer.
Islam in Switzerland

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Demographics

History

Organizations

Mosques

See also

External links