I talked with young people (especially my hosts) who were more open minded but told me that the middle aged class generally was against it.

I think the fact that you ban religious objects in public institutions is completely different. Yes you are not allowed to put a cross or depiction of saints or whatever. But this is part of their mosque, just as a bell tower is part of a Christian Church…Let’s ban all bell towers from now on.

Secondly about the justifications for restrictions. Look at how art.15 para.2 is envisaged. It says “Everyone has the right to choose freely their religion or their philosophical convictions, and to profess them alone or in community with others.” So it says clearly to “profess” and I do think a religious building/edifice is part of the way you profess your religion.

And then read this with art.36 and it is clear that it is a restriction on the “profession of a religion” as well. Let’s say religion X needs shiny balloons to profess their religion? Restricting shiny balloons will mean that you are restricting his freedom to profess a religion.

I am struck by the outcome, because it is Switzerland, a country that generally is used as an example; it does discriminate against one specific community (why didn’t they ban Buddhist shrines, saying that the candles pollute the ozone layer)and the no. of minarets and people who profess is just too low. Where is their any public justification????

Plus they fucked up big time with the arrest of Al Gaddafi’s son as well…

I doubt this is against the constitution, cause it doesn’t restrict the 3 principles that u mentioned: no one is forcing anyone to change religion or how to practice it. It is the same as having religious items in the public school system.
PLUS, if nothing works, u can always blame the noise from the minarets and have it fixed without a referendum.
BUT it is retarded, since no one is banning the building of new churches or wtv.

The second thing: its probably different to judge when ur not there. Patriot Act looks weird now and so does its magnitude, but 8 years ago it looked perfectly fine.
Its easy to preach about the cold war when in Harvard, and its easy to pity Africa without doing shit while u have drinking water lol.
After being fed different ideologies and living it for your own, u kinda have a change of heart.

Watch the movie Crush: u’ll notice the change after uve watched half the movie – between people who judge and are being charged for it, and people who dont judge but start too:) It might be the same situation as with the swiss.

Cheers Dude.

Jenő