Islam and Muslims in Switzerland Through the Prism of Religious Visibility and Islamic Militancy

In this chapter on Islam and Muslims in Switzerland, Mallory Schneuwly Purdie firstly describes the historical development through which Islam has become the third largest religious denomination in Switzerland after Catholicism and Protestantism. Four confluent migration phases (economic, political, family reunification and humanitarian) explain the ethnic-linguistic diversity of Islam in Switzerland, where Muslims of Turkish, Bosnian, Albanian and North African origin predominate. Then, the author shows how Muslims have become both objects and subjects of media and political debates through the examples of religious visibility and Islamic militancy. She demonstrates that the 2008 popular initiative to ban the construction of new minarets in Switzerland and, in the mind of the initiators, to stop what they define as evidence of an “Islamisation” of Switzerland, has on the contrary contributed to the politicisation of Muslims in Switzerland. Moreover, it has fostered the emergence of an Islamic militancy that is no longer of foreign origin, but rooted in Switzerland.