I know it makes me sad that people can be like this.

There is a town a few miles from where I live called Dudley, it's the biggest shithole in England, a disgusting place in dire need of regeneration. There was a plan put forward to build a mosque, an attractive one that would make the town look far more attractive. The protests against allowing a mosque to be built in the town was scary. It lead to many of the protesters were saying some pretty islamophobic and quite frankly racist things.

The plans went ahead despite the protests, which is good in this case. But it was just shocking to see so many people opposed to building a mosque. I was fairly disgusted by my "Neighbours".

I know I can be pretty "brutal" and "intolerant" towards religion at times, but I would never protest against building a place to worship.

I wonder if they have a breakdown of the vote via religion like we would in the US.

Apparently both the Catholic and Protestant church were decidedly AGAINST the Minaret Ban.

Though obviously for 57% of the population to vote for it... at least some would likely fall in those religions.

I think about a quarter of the country is atheist?

Voter turnout would be interesting too... maybe people who were against it just assumed it would be overwhelmingly voted down?

Here's one.

Back in the old days, there used to be a man who went up there, and essentially told others it was prayer time by reciting what we refer to as the "adhan." Nowadays people don't usually go up there, since microphones/loudspeakers are used.

And I don't understand this banning - they're banning them because of racist posters? What is the logic behind that?

Nah, the posters were part of the campaign to get them banned.

As for why they banned them... i still can't say.

Xenophobia seems the most likely reason so far.

Women were granted the right to vote in the first Swiss cantons in 1959, at the federal level in 1971^[20][26] and, after resistance, in the last canton Appenzell Innerrhoden in 1990. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland

[20]  A Brief Survey of Swiss History  
^[26] Country profile: Switzerland

...

Ok... I guess It's just due to me often confusing then with Sweeden... or something.

Wow.

Interesting way to celebrate Eid.

France bans the burka, the Swiss ban minorets, few countries want Turkey in the EU. Does Europe have an issue with Islam?

I'll make a modest guess on who voted if you like. But I'll probably be off base with this.

2.7 million people voted apparently.

57% of these 2,700,000 is around 1,500,000 people (who voted for the ban).

That leaves 1,200,000 people who voted against. I'm assuming that most, if not all of Switzerland's 400,000 muslims voted. So that leaves around 800,000 people who voted against the ban from other denominations. As you say the Christians of the country would have been against the ban. Switzerland is 41% Christian (around 3,000,000) so I would imagine that at least half of the remaining 800,000 against the ban were Christians if they were true to their word (that would just be around 13% of the Christians).

As for who voted against, I don't have a clue.

I would imagine some statistics will be released eventually; I can't find any yet though.

I agree with the rest of you that this is pretty disgusting. I'm an atheist but I don't see how religious buildings should be banned just because because some people don't like them (assuming they are funded by the church). Let's not skirt around the issue, this is blatent distrimination against Islam. I don't see how a 'free' society can ban one type of religious architecture but allow all others and those posters were truly disturbing. I'm glad at least a few cities banned them.

A huge one.

Europe fears Islamification basically. They have this strange paranoia that Islam is going to take over and Sharia law is going to be introduced. This is of course not all Europeans and the sentiment is stronger in some regions than most.

Also you bring up an interesting issue with the burkhas - whats this forums stance on them? They are certainly more related to fundamentalist Islam than minarets.