The beginnings of a difficult dialogue, Amira Hafner al-Jabaji

Thu, 16 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000

Islam is the fastest growing religious community in Switzerland, but as a result of various national restrictions, less than 10% of them are holders of a Swiss passport.

I would like to elaborate upon Francis Piccand’s description of the national and cultural diversity of Islam in Switzerland by giving a brief account of the stages in Muslim immigration. The first batch of immigrants, consisting mostly of highly educated young men and women, arrived in the late 1950s and 1960s, for purposes of study or research, or for professional reasons. The majority of these Muslims had Middle Eastern origins – they included Iraqis, Syrians and Egyptians. The first Arab Muslim student organisation, known as ‘Arabian’, was founded in Zurich in 1965. A number of these immigrants later returned to their home country.

The second and largest wave of Muslim immigration in the 1970s and 1980s was caused by the demand of the Swiss economy for cheap manpower, especially in the construction industry. As so-called ‘Gastarbeiter’, or ‘guest workers’, these immigrants were expected to leave the country after a period of work. But many stayed and settled, inviting their families to join them in Switzerland. Many came from the Balkans, particularly from Turkey and the former Yugoslavia. Their education tends to be limited.

In the 1980s, and increasingly up to the present, Muslim immigrants have been primarily political refugees or war refugees fleeing from the political instability and the numerous violent conflicts in the Islamic world: the Russian–Afghani war, the Iran–Iraq war, the civil wars in Lebanon, Algeria, Somalia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, the war against the Kurdish people, and the Kosovo war. In recent years, we have also had an increasing number of Muslim immigrants from African countries. Most Muslim immigrants work in factories or as craftsmen in the building trade. Some have opened small stores, supermarkets, snack bars or small restaurants where products and food from their respective countries are available.

Despite the fact that the clear majority of Muslims in Switzerland are migrants, I do not believe in calling them migrants in general without acknowledging that there is a second, a third and apparently a fourth generation. To do so is to reinforce the common perception of an irresolvable contradiction between being Muslim and being European – or being Swiss. It also indicates a failure to accept and respect Islam as a religion of the same value as Christianity or Judaism, in the sense of a universal practical belief. To name all Swiss-socialised Muslims ‘migrants’ forces an inappropriate cultural identity upon them.

But the diversity of the Muslim communities does indeed have consequences for their organisation. The contact between members of these different Islamic centres – particularly those in the German part of Switzerland – is minimal. I can adduce two main reasons for this. One is the lack of a unifying language. We must be aware that many Muslim immigrants in the German part of Switzerland hardly speak German. The second reason is the difference in tradition. With little or no contact between groups, all the local traditional behaviours and views are conserved. Exchange of views and reflection on their respective cultures hardly takes place. Access to these centres is often difficult for any ‘outsider’. Even being a Muslim woman can be a reason for exclusion.

Now we are witnessing the new dawning of a Christian–Islamic dialogue. The first step towards this dialogue was made by Muslims in a particular conjuncture, having a number of grievances that they wanted the Swiss authorities to address – resentments rooted in the Israel–Palestine conflict. These dialogues occurred either on a private basis or were organised by student associations.

Meanwhile, with a second wave of immigration, the need for places of prayer grew fast. Muslims began to rent apartments, close down factory halls and empty old houses to change them into prayer rooms. For the Muslims it was clear that this was only a transitional stage. In the late 1970s, the leader of the Islamic centre in Berne initiated plans for the construction of the first mosque in Switzerland. It had its rooms in a converted motor garage in the greater Berne region. The authority supported the project, but it was scuppered by a mandatory plebiscite.

After this bitter experience, an understanding arose on both sides that the needs of Muslims could not be fulfilled without the support of Swiss churches and their local representatives. The churches wished to cooperate more intensively. So the Muslims could now register their concerns, and from the Christian side, both academic and theological dialogue began to open up. In the years that followed this dialogue became quite intensive for those who participated. But a long time passed without concrete results for the Muslim community.

Today’s Association of Christians and Muslims in Switzerland

At the end of the 1980s, a question emerged about how to make Islamic burials possible. In 1990 an association was established, named first the ‘Association of Christians and Muslims in Berne’, and later the ‘Association of Christians and Muslims in Switzerland’. Its aim was to lead a practical exchange. In the past twelve years, its members have added various issues to their work on Muslim cemeteries: general information about Islam, Christian–Muslim marriages and families, healthcare, and Muslim children in the state schools.

The committee of this association is half Muslim, half Christian. In spite of this parity, we cannot speak of equality. Most Christian committee members are employees, either of the Roman Catholic or Protestant Church. They work by order of their employer. Infrastructure and funds are at their disposal. They have influence in the population and politics. Most of them are theological, organisational, or legal professionals.

The Muslim committee members are more or less laity. Their commitment is based on a private effort. They have no support from Muslim institutions and no financial backing. The majority of the Muslim Committee members are from the first generation and, although they have been living in Switzerland for a long time, difficulties in understanding each other in terms of language, culture and mentality still occur from time to time. But there is no generation gap. All the committee members have university, high-level school or professional education.

Dialogue soon took off on a very concrete level with questions regarding Christian–Islamic marriage, from Christian priests and Swiss Christian women. For the churches, the question arose – how to preserve respect to both parties and traditions in such a marriage? Legal questions regarding the validity of the marriage law, divorce, women’s religious education, and so on, were discussed. Great attention was also paid to the social and cultural experiences of immigrants. All this information was summed up in a brochure called ‘One Family – Two Religions’, available in German.

Health care came second. Issues raised by medical doctors, nurses and hospital managements concerning Muslim patients led to a second brochure: ‘Muslims in Hospital’. This discussed such delicate items such as nutritional requirements, places and times for prayer, visits, blood transfusion, artificial fertilisations, autopsy, cause of death. The debate about donation of organs split the Muslims into two groups. Meanwhile, various hospital managements understood that there was the need for a room for prayer not only for the Muslims but also for Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and others. In Berne’s main hospital one year ago, a so-called ‘room of silence’ was established.

The third brochure we have published is about Muslim children in school in Switzerland. This one, aimed at their parents, is available in German and French, and we hope, by the end of the year, in Turkish, Arabic and Albanian. It discusses cooperation between parents and teachers, the Islamic calendar with its feasts, nutritional requirements, and participation in sport activities and school camps. In addition, you will also find there a chapter discussing Muslim children and Christian traditions at school.

One central concern in recent years has been the dearth of Muslim cemeteries. Cemeteries in Switzerland are under the administration of the municipalities. This means that every single city and every single village has regulations of its own. Until two years ago, a Muslim burial was possible only in Geneva. This cemetery was established in the mid 1980s when the mosque was built there, but only those who had been living in Geneva were allowed to be buried there. For all other Muslims, there was no provision. With the increase in Muslim immigration, the problem became more critical. Many Turkish Muslims at great expense transported the bodies of their relations to Turkey despite the breach in Islamic tradition, according to which the body has to be buried within 24 hours.

Several years ago the Association of Christians and Muslims in Switzerland called for a Muslim cemetery in Berne. For political reasons, it proved impossible to have a private Muslim cemetery. But Muslims were able to voice their needs: the graves must point in the direction of Mecca; bodies are supposed to be buried in cloth, not in coffins; and the graves should be everlasting. The burial in cloth was also not allowed. As a compromise the Muslims consented to use a thin wooden coffin, made of soft fir-wood. But the everlasting grave was the difficult sticking point. In Switzerland, the tendency is to shorten the period by which any grave is abolished. Today it is after twenty-five years. Three quarters of Protestants nowadays decide in favour of cremation anyway. This practice is not allowed in Islam. It was interesting to be reminded of a common medieval Christian practice, in which the everlasting grave was also used: after a certain time bones were collected and deposited on a central part of the cemetery called the ‘bone house‘.

So, since 2000, Muslims in Berne can be buried in accordance with their traditions. A field of 200 hundred graves is at their disposal in the cemetery of the city of Berne. It is possible to bury on two levels, so for the next fifty years the problem for the Muslims around Berne is solved. For the time being Berne, followed by Basle and later Zurich – where there was the most massive political opposition – have found a solution to these problems. But for everywhere else in Switzerland the problem remains unresolved.

Lastly, we have been discussing religious education in Switzerland. In public schools, religious education is regulated differently in the various cantons. Either the school organises a class for all the children of any religion, with a teacher who is usually a Christian, or the community takes responsibility for religious education. But even in the latter case, the class is held in public schools. For Muslim children there is no such option. Either they visit an Islamic centre with their parents, where they take classes in the Koran, or the parents themselves instruct their children in religious practice, which rarely happens with much forethought. However, there is no instruction in Islamic ethical standards, no help for Muslim children to find answers to questions as Muslims in a non-Islamic society, and no instruction that encourages comparison of many similar values in Islam and Christianity.

It is obvious that the teachers in the centres do not fulfil the necessary standards for teaching people about Islam. The imams, as Francis Piccand has mentioned, are often imported from various Islamic countries. Sometimes they stay for only two or three years, and are not familiar with Swiss circumstances. Often they don’t learn the language and as a result there is a lack of understanding of the concerns of the community members. In the future, there must be an opportunity to educate Muslims as imams in Switzerland, to the same theological level as exists for Christian priests. The standard of Islamic teaching for children has to be the same as for other schoolteachers. This could happen if a faculty of Islamic studies were established, which was attached to a Swiss university. The future will show how the political mood in Switzerland develops, and whether the Swiss population is willing to accept Islam as a religion of full value in its midst.

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The beginnings of a difficult dialogue, Amira Hafner al-Jabaji