Beyond its excellence in watch-making and financial services, Switzerland is still a retrograde nation in many ways. This neutral and very wealthy state did not give women the right to vote until 1970 - long after most of the vote.

While Switzerland has finally caught up with women’s rights, it still needs to understand the concept of minority rights. The rise of far-right, neo-fascist parties in Europe in recent years is not an exclusively Swiss phenomenon. Fueled by anti-Muslim prejudice - the “Eurobia” fear - far-right parties from the British National Party (BNP) to Holland’s Geert Wilders (who calls for banning the Qur’an) has been able to capture an worrying, albeit relatively very small, part of the electorate. In this past summer’s European Parliamentary elections, Wilders’ Freedom party and the BNP both secured enough voted to now place MPs in Europe’s congress.

Thus while Switzerland may not be singled out for being alone in the anti-Muslim hysteria, the nation’s far-right parties are most blatant in their anti-Islam, racist political posters:

The message here is not only based on anti-Muslim prejudice, but a message of White Supremacy. That was one for an election a few years ago where the far-right party ran on a platform of ending immigration.

There were back this year in an ad campaign meant to rally support for a referendum that will prohibit the construction of Minarets in Mosques:

And here is the best (meaning worst) part:

“Zurich city council said yesterday that a poster showing missile-like minarets on a Swiss flag can be displayed ahead of a national referendum on whether to ban the building of minarets at mosques in Switzerland.”

Swiss Miss on Tolerance