A number of Swiss Muslim activists voiced reservations about the launch of a new forum aimed at making the "moderate" voice of Muslims heard, fearing it could split the community.
"Who sez any of us want to be 'moderate,' anyway?" | They warned, in interviews with IslamOnline.net, that the new forum would be exploited by the media as a pretext to target any Swiss Muslim adhering to his/her religion, label them as "extremists" and even call for their deportation. The forum's chairwoman, Tunisian-born Saida Keller-Messahli, told swissinfo on Friday, December 3, that the forum will have no taboos with respect to issues put for debate and will "criticize in an intellectual fashion."
"Only after the opinions have been presented will we start killing each other and our neighbors. We've learned to be very orderly, living in Switzerland, y'know..." | "We want to show that Islam can be interpreted in a way that is compatible with human rights." With a debate already taking place in Switzerland about whether Imams should be trained at Swiss institutes, Keller-Messahli argued that people were making too much fuss about nothing. "Any person who can read Arabic can interpret the Qur'an, [although] we accept that we are not all Qur'anic scholars," she told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation's website. Muslim activists in Switzerland showed deep concerns about a proposal put forward by major Swiss Christian groups on the need for a government-supervised institute to educate imams on the "liberal" lifestyle in western societies. The proposal raised some fears within the community that the institute would be a platform for imposing a European Islam, sidelining the Shari`ah and dealing with the Noble Qur'an as an out-dated historical heritage. |