As a Swiss referendum backs a ban on the building of minarets, the
BBC's Islamic affairs analyst Roger Hardy looks at the often uneasy
relationship between Islam and Europe.
Swiss People's Party poster against minarets
The campaign against minarets was led by the Swiss People's Party
It might be argued that Switzerland is a special case without much relevance to the rest of Europe.
It is true enough that the country has its own individual form of
popular democracy - and that it is home to only 320,000 Muslims,
between 4% and 5% of the population.
But it is not just in Switzerland that the presence of growing Muslim communities has polarised opinion.
A series of controversies from the Rushdie affair 20 years ago to the
more recent row over Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad
have reflected the unease that many Europeans feel about this
relatively new Muslim presence.
This is not confined to a few tabloid newspapers or a few xenophobic right-wing parties.
It is an Islamophobia driven by a variety of factors.
Since the attacks of 9/11 in the United States, and the bombings in
Madrid and London, Muslims have often been regarded as a security
threat.
They are seen as not just resistant to integration, but determined to
impose their values on the Christian or post-Christian societies of the
West.
For governments anxious to maintain social harmony at home and good
relations with Muslim governments abroad, this poses a set of difficult
dilemmas.
And for many of the estimated 15 million Muslims in Western Europe, the
Swiss vote will be seen as one more sign that - whatever governments
may say - they are simply not welcome.