Muslim women fear they could be attacked after Switzerland votes to ban burqa in public
The ban could lead to an increase in ‘Islamophobic attacks towards Muslim women’, claim activists, as Samuel Osborne reports
Muslim women in Switzerland fear they could be verbally or physically assaulted after the country narrowly voted in favour of banning the burqa or niqab in public places.
The ban, which will make it illegal for people to completely cover their faces, passed by 51 to 49 per cent in a public referendum on 7 March. It must now be drawn up into a bill by MPs within two years.
“I felt at a loss once more about the stupidity of such a vote, like the ban on minarets,” Rifa’at Lenzin, a Muslim woman who wears a hijab to the mosque, tells The Independent, referring to a Swiss vote on banning minarets in 2009. She says she worries the result signifies that “the majority of Swiss people are against either Islam or Muslims, or both”.
While the ban outlaws full-face veils in public areas, they may still be worn inside places of prayer. Meanwhile, face coverings worn for health and safety reasons are exempt, meaning those adopted to prevent the spread of coronavirus will still be allowed.
Ms Lenzin adds that she is concerned the outcome of the vote could lead to more abuse of Muslim women. “Verbal or physical abuse is an everyday phenomenon for Muslim women wearing a hijab,” she says. “If you want to wear a hijab in Switzerland, you need a lot of courage and [the] awareness [that] you will be abused and even attacked in public.”
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Her views are shared by Cyrielle Huguenot, head of women’s rights at Amnesty International Switzerland, who says the ban “may lead to a rise in Islamophobic attacks towards Muslim women.” She adds: “The burqa ban violates the rights of Muslim women to freedom of expression and religion, and many have become aware that they are not free to decide over their own body.”
Around 380,000 Muslims live in Switzerland according to official statistics, representing around 5 per cent of the population, and most are from Turkey, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Ms Lenzin says the vote reveals xenophobic tendencies within Swiss society. “Muslims are well integrated in Swiss society and pose no problems. This makes it so strange that votes against veils or minarets – that is, votes that target the Muslim population – are so easily accepted,” she says.
“Since the ban on minarets, there is a growing gap between the Swiss majority and the Muslim population, which are less than 5 per cent of the population. Although being very dependent on tourism and open to international investments, Switzerland has, and always had, very xenophobic traits.”
Of the country’s Muslim population, no women wear the burqa (which covers the whole of the body, the face and the eyes) and only 30 wear the niqab (which leaves the area around the eyes visible), according to research from Lucerne University.
Dr Andreas Tunger-Zanetti, manager of Lucerne University’s Centre for Research on Religion, tells The Independent that he believes the narrowness of the vote shows there has been a more informed debate compared to the referendum to ban minarets.
There may also have been a “corona effect”, he adds, saying the pandemic “has brought people to think corona is certainly the bigger problem than the 30 or so women wearing a face cover – which we all wear now”.
It was generally the areas that benefit the most from tourism that voted against the ban, while the areas with low populations of Muslims were for the ban. “As usual, it’s those regions where you do not even know many Muslims that have voted for the ban by a large majority,” Dr Tunger-Zanetti says.
If you want to wear a hijab in Switzerland, you need a lot of courage and the awareness that you will be abused and even attacked in public
During the campaign, the government urged the public to vote against the ban, arguing that it would damage tourism from Arab countries, and a group of hoteliers and tourism professionals have since condemned the ban.
Dr Tunger-Zanetti, who has previously surveyed key figures in Switzerland’s Muslim community and found that between 21 and 37 women wear the niqab, adds that he has heard that at least two of those women have decided to emigrate after the ban is implemented.
The researcher also says Muslim women could face increased attacks even before the ban comes into effect. “The experience of France and other countries shows that in this transition period, some people will forget the ban is not yet valid, and will be angry when seeing a woman wearing a niqab in the street,” he says.
“Some will even try to attack such women. Some have tried to rip off the niqab when they see it; it’s not common, but it may take place and has taken place in certain cases in France.”
Switzerland follows France, which banned the wearing of full-face veils in public in 2011, and Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark and the Netherlands, which have full or partial bans on face coverings in public.
The ban could lead to an increase in terror attacks, Dr Tunger-Zanetti suggests, as extremists use it “as a pretext for their action against the tyrannic people and state”. He adds: “I am not sure that will happen, but again the experience in France shows that there is a certain danger.”
Overall, the Muslim community appears “quite worried”, Dr Tunger-Zanetti says. There are concerns that the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which led both the campaign to ban the burqa and the one to ban the building of new minarets, will now turn its focus towards banning Islamic headscarfs in schools.
“They ask themselves what will be next,” he says. “What is the next subject they will try to bring forth in order to restrict Muslim life in Switzerland and make it uneasy for Muslims to live here?”
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