Touche pas à mon pays

Good afternoon everybody

Ladies and gentlemen, we do warmly thank you for having replied to our call/invitation.

We would also like to deeply thank you for coming to join us here in Bern

For the time being, here we are in the Helvetiaplatz ( Helvetia Square). We intended to demonstrate before the Libyan Embassy. However, only a team of five demonstrators were permitted to go round there. This restriction is due to the tense diplomatic relations that Switzerland and Libya are going through over the last few months. So, once again we do like to thank you for having taken into account the reasons behind changing the demonstration location.

Still being here, in this square dedicated to allegory that stands for our country is symbolically pregnant since it reveals the extent to which we are strongly attached to Switzerland as well as to its democratic values…. We do believe in a strong democratic State and our wish is to show and express a national unity.

As Muslim Swiss residents and citizen belonging to a Muslim cultural background, reacting to Mouammar KADAFI’s statement is the type of action that lay the basis of citizenship. His call for the Jihad has to be stood against through such symbolic actions.

So, we react as Swiss citizens and Swiss living in Switzerland. We ask him to keep off our country. We reject any attempt to wrongly use the religious consideration and also that of Islam in order to raise Muslims’ hatred, be it among Swiss Muslims or other Muslims in different parts of the globe, against our country and against our fellow citizens.

We also reject any attempt aiming at destabilizing our country. As usual, we always express our solidarity with our fellow citizens with whom we live equally regardless of our cultural and religious differences.

We will not let anyone use or handle our ambition for election purposes or any type of international strategic game or action.

Banning minarets is a Swiss domestic affair. So, any foreign interference in this matter is to be rejected, let alone if it is from a dictatorship. We are determined to solve this problem through democratic ways since we believe in the State of Rights that our country represents.

We reject any type of interference, above all if it is implemented by a dictatorship

We stand strongly against any call for the Jihad as well as against any attempt to boycott or undermine our country. As Muslim Swiss citizens, we strongly refuse to be described as “slaves”, unbelievers, renegades or evil believers. KADAFI’s description is unfairly harmful to us. Yet, we would really like to remind him that Switzerland is a country where all citizens, including MuSwuiss Muslim citizens, enjoy religious freedom.

We would also like to remind the whole world that, as Swiss Muslim citizens belonging to a Muslim cultural background,we do really appreciate the state of rights we live in. We do also have the right to use different means to solve and fix out issues through democratic and legal ways.

Finally, we would like to express our unconditional solidarity with the hostages, and we call an immediate release of our fellow citizen Max GOLDI.

Ladies and gentlemen, a certain number of TV channel, radio station and newspapers links the image of Islam to the horrible acts of some religious fundamentalist groups. A way to make them gain more interest in the media and therefore allow them ‘ to harm” the real image of Islam and Muslims. So, Today, as Muslim Swiss citizen with a Muslim cultural background, we would like to give the real image of Muslims living in a host country where they enjoy their full rights. The image of Muslims fully aware of the diversity of the modes of expressions characterizing their religion; modes that ranges from the most tolerant to the most fundamentalist and extremist as is the case with other religions.

The aim of this demonstration is also to transmit a message of peace and mutual acceptance; a message inviting people from different cultural and religious background to get actively involved in mutual exchange in order to abolish all of misunderstanding and fear. We would especially take advantage of this opportunity so as to draw young people’s attention to the importance of respecting others even if the hold different attitudes or conviction, that is the right to be different.

Kadafi was not the only foreign interference in this matter of banning minaret in Switzerland. Extremist Europeen Right wing parties also expressed their will to interfere in the minaret issue. They put their nose in what we see as a totally Swiss domestic affair. Switzerland will stay for ever as a “beautiful gleaming lady”

We reject Kadafi’s call for the Jihad as well as any other type of dictator foreign interference in our domestic affairs

We reject all forms of religious and racial hatred. We also refuse any type of stigmatization that is based on religion, culture or skin colour.

We see ourselves as offsprings of this Swiss lady that welcomes us to live together in harmony regardless of cultural or religious background. This Swiss lady invites us to settle down our difference through dialogue, mutual exchange and also via democratic ways. The beautiful gleaming lady =Switzerland refuses to stigmatize its children whatever their skin colour or religious faith is.

This Swiss family stands for a rainbow in a democratic garden, where its mountais refuse to stoop so as to make its human values so universal and worldwide.

We would like to remind our fellow citizens that we are in no way obscurantist powers. We love and we are so proud of our country. November 29th was and will stay as an attempt to weaken our country from within by targeting its Muslim community and therefore split it into two parts; a retrograde and obscurantist part ( the Muslims) and a democratic part ( the other remaining part and the other citizens.)

The tried to split us and make us raise hatred against each other

• With a political class that assume its historical responsibility; with a federal council that neither took enough time to predict the gravity of what is likely to happen, nor put enough pressure to assure its position and use its rights to withdraw this initiative.
• With political parties that express a « non to the initiative but that say to have problems with Muslims »
• With populist parties and their partisans

Today, we invite our fellow citizens to stand against any attempt aiming at handling them. We shouldn’t behave according to Machiaveli’s saying ‘split in order to better reign”. We shouldn’t be trapped by election strategies that take a part of our fellow citizen as its hostages.

We would also like to remind that this ‘movement of citizen » insists on the Muslim component that we conceive of as faithful, loyal and reliable.

We would like to remind everyone that our country ( Switzerland) is considered all over the Muslim world not only as a heaven of rights and liberties, but also as peaceful harbour for for different religious faiths.

Today we are to be seen as the Heren Cow. So alive will stay the stay the one who refuses to withdraw from the struggle; the struggle of citizenship that is loyal! …. And like all sport meetings, we refuse all forms of stimulants or manipulation.

We would like to send a signal to the 40% of the citizens who have voted out of coherence and democracy, and also to the cities and cantons that overtly rejected the anti minaret initiative. All these stakeholders have expressed a strong will to maintain the stability of our country. That is to say that we really aim at guaranteeing the necessary balance for our State of rights. Thus we are working so hard to stand in the way of any foreign neo fascist initiative.

Once again we are so proud to be Swiss citizens

I strongly believe that the 29th November incident was an opportunity for Swiss citizens to distinguish between our enemies who are looking forward to weaken our country in a period of time when we are supposed to be united and face serious external challenges. Our enemies are those who are interested in taking our fellow citizen into hostage through either short cut political attitudes or via wrongly Jihadist attitudes.

We are an integral part of the Swiss nation. We are at the same time a synthetic and heteroclite component in the fabric of this nation. Our loyalty and faithfulness is unconditional and we believe in the democratic values of this nation.

From today on, we would like to express our adherence to the common values of this nation and that enable us to live on equal scales despite our different background without any discrimination as our national constitution guarantees it.

We would like to reinforce this confidence through our acts of loyalty . our country is in need of us in the face of any external pressure whatsoever

Let us stress our feelings of belonging to this country without falling into the trap of any limited feeling of nationalism or religious belonging.

We do believe that in a strong democratic country where all its citizen gather around the project of a universal message that reflects the deeply rooted tradition of our country. Democracy prevailing among the different national and international agencies such as the civic society, the Geneva Convention, The CICR, the Human Rights Constitutional Council and others find a fertile setting in our country.

From today on, let’s get deeply involved, whatever our attitude or our position, together with those who got in touch with us, through our website or through the phone, in claiming that we have common and shared values and that Islam and Swiss Muslims reject any attempt aiming at weakening our nation.

All ambitions expressing the will to establish discrimination between different Swiss cultural backgrounds are to be rejected. We want this demonstration to lay the foundation for a new citizen pact. A pact that will reinforce dialogue and exchange between Muslim and non Muslim Swiss citizen.

Through this citizen action and movement, we would like to show that we are to assume our responsibility during this crucial moment when our country is exposed to threats from different sides. As usual, now and then we reject any attempt to destabilize our country.

Long live Switzerland as a democratic country for all its citizens, long live Switzerland that stands for that rainbow that symbolizes human rights values and guaranteeing freedom for all citizens regardless of their cultural and religious background.

Our « Fondue » wasn’t well served on November 29th since the ingredients weren’t enough balanced. If the dish wasn’t well cooked it was not due to the cheese quality. Instead it was due to the will of the cooks who forgot to add a little maizena, a component necessary to its success.

This Herens Cow, who got actively involved in this struggle, politely asks you to proudly leave his arena at four o’clock in the afternoon and, therefore, strongly regain its beautiful mountains that stand for the resistance and pride of our beloved country. A country that will always stay there in the face of any foreign external threats

As Swiss Muslims, we have to stress the following principles “ We are against Jihad against our country, we are against handling Swiss Muslims or Islam, we are against any kind of boycott because Switzerland is our country and it is a nation of Rights..

Before concluding, I would to stress the following principle:

Cultures have three destinies:

• Living in conflict leads to genocide
• Living in competition leads to apartheid
• Living together enables everybody to positively contribute something. This last destiny can’t be fulfilled without a real political will.

Thank you so much for having let your ears.