On the Swiss vote to ban minarets.
Switzerland has become the first European country to ban the construction of minarets in its constitution .
The proposal grew out of the campaign of a number of conservative groups in the normally sleepy Swiss country town of Langenthal against an application to build a minaret next to a mosque.
The proposal was launched by members of the rightwing Swiss People's Party and the ultra conservative Federal Democratic Union. The ultra-conservative Swiss People's Party (SVP) has displayed in the past a flair for the dramatic at the expense of migrants who happen to have the wrong colour or to profess the wrong religion. In 2007 it got its largest ever share of the vote after a sleek anti-foreigner campaign that was explicitly racist. Ulrich Schüler, an SVP parliamentarian and leading member of the anti-minaret movement, trying to rationalize his party's position has argued that the minarets are political rather than religious.
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