Muslim umbrella group warns against stigmatisation of Islam

The Federation of Islamic Organisations in Switzerland has warned against associating crimes with a certain religion. In an interview with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) on Tuesday, federation spokesperson Pascal Gemperli said that someone’s religious affiliation was not a determining factor in crime. Muslim teenagers are not disproportionately represented in juvenile crime proceedings, according to Gemperli. “We often observe that Muslims are quantified as a block, while Christians are split into their different churches,” Gemperli said in the interview. If it were proven that people with a weaker sense of faith received heavier punishments than stronger believers, religion would probably even be classified as a violence-inhibiting factor, he said. + Who funds Swiss mosques? Religion, like culture, was a very abstract concept, he added, so that drawing a direct conclusion from this factor to someone’s risk of violence was questionable. Many phenomena, such as honour ...