Excerpt:
The startling resolve of Swiss voters to constitutionally ban new Islamic minarets was widely condemned by Swiss church groups, some of which had opposed placing the issue before Swiss voters at all.
"The Lutheran World Federation [LWF] regrets that some sectors of Swiss society and politics found it necessary to take the issue of the construction of minarets in Switzerland to a referendum, and to force a decision for or against a ban," LWF chief Ishmael Noko complained to Ecumenical News International (ENI). The Swiss-based LWF professes to represent nearly 70 million Lutherans globally, though its slant is always toward left-leaning and imploding European Protestantism. ENI is the news service of the Swiss-based World Council of Churches (WCC), which has not yet but almost certainly will condemn Swiss voters.
Swiss-based church and ecumenical officials berated the anti-minaret referendum. Some reluctantly acknowledged that Christians often have difficult building churches in Islamist-ruled nations or, as in Saudi Arabia , face outright bans. But these protesting church officials insisted Switzerland 's history of religious tolerance should not react against or replicate religious intolerance elsewhere.