Whilst leading Muslim clerics complained of the Swiss decision to ban the building of further minarets, there was not a word from the same for the continued denial of the right to worship freely for religious minorities across the Muslim-majority world.
In Egypt, the Coptic Orthodox Christian minority make up some 10% of the population; yet they continue to face hostility and persecution, largely whipped up by the Islamists. Writing in the New York Times, Daniel Williams observes the double-standards of the leaders of the Islamic community in condemning the Swiss referendum on minarets, whilst remaining silent about the continued denial of Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority’s right to worship in peace:
On a side street in the far northeast Cairo suburb of Ain Shams, the door of a five-story former underwear factory is padlocked.