Bern, 02.02.2012

By HS

Hilal_Karasu_citizenship_denied_02022012 It’d never occurred to me that having been born a British citizen and been raised as a Muslim in the UK was somehow, for others, an utter contradiction of terms. I attended a predominantly Jewish primary school, taken a liking to apples and honey, and spent the following six years in a Church of England secondary school where I was asked to join the school choir and (thank God) was rejected soon after they likened me to the dragging of fingernails on a chalk board. Religion for me was never an obstacle to “Britishness”. Waking up for the dawn prayer at 5.30 in the morning before school never seemed to infringe on an egg-on-toast breakfast, neither did the prayer at sundown break the tradition of fish and chips on a Friday night. Nowadays, when we think ‘British’ we don’t imagine a white man in a bowler hat sipping tea. For many second and third generation migrants in the UK there have been countless influences that have become a part of what is now considered to be ‘British’. Having said that, I knew well before they started introducing curry sauce in our local chip shop that I was growing up to experience a huge melting pot of a society when our Scottish drama teacher cast an Indonesian Romeo with an Iranian Juliet! This mix match of cultures and nationalities has so far continued to thrive in my local town. To experience, in the space of an hour, a Polish manicure, followed by lunch of Jamaican jerk chicken and rice and, to finish up with, a Turkish coffee from the Kabul Kebab sounds impossible to some but nothing less than ordinary for me. Native Brits have unreservedly benefitted from this wealth of culture. For sure, if it wasn’t for Africa Black Soap, you’d still be seeing a lot more disgruntled, red-faced teenagers suffering through puberty’s acne!
When I stumbled across St.Galler Tagblatt Online’s report of 27.01.12 entitled «Das lasse ich mir nicht bieten» I knew it was time to churn out another, justified rant!
Gülsen Karasu and her daughter Hilal Karasu (pictured, and who, by the way, was born and bred in Romanshorn, Switzerland) were denied Swiss citizenship on the grounds that they had not fully integrated into Swiss society. This decision, taken by the Naturalization Commission, stated that, in no uncertain terms, as a woman who submits willingly to wearing the Islamic head covering (Arabic: hijab), she could not be said to have fully integrated into Swiss society as this was considered a fundamental prerequisite. At an interview with the Naturalization Commision Hilal is said to have been told to give up efforts in her pursuit of further education and to settle for marriage instead whereby a man could take care of her needs: the Naturalization Commission declined to comment when pressed by her frustrated mother Gülsen Karasu. The family have vowed to challenge the decision by any means necessary. But asides from the barrage of erroneous questioning on Hilal’s private life, there are more fundamental questions at hand.
Freedom of choice of religion or the right to practice freely in any society is, without question, a fundamental right which should not be a precondition to the right to citizenship. And this is not the first time a case like this has been brought to the attention of the Muslim community, the ICCS is currently counselling another Muslim family in the Canton of Bern whose application for Swiss citizenship was denied for similar reasons. But in a society such as we find in Switzerland religious symbols are not only attacked in the private sphere but are now engrained into the constitution of the country, namely, article 72 of the Swiss Federal Constitution which imposes a ban on the construction of minarets. This consequently confuses the concept of integration with assimilation.The hijab is not considered as a religious symbol, it is a religious obligation for practicing Muslim women, the removal of which would suggest that a Muslim woman is expected to assimilate in order to gain Swiss citizenship, and thus integration as sole precondition is superseded. This begs the question, how can a nation like Switzerland stand back and allow for such an infringement of a fundamental right, and, worse yet, at national level?
The answer to the question may lie in the make-up of the non-native segment of Swiss society. The majority of non-native Swiss migrants come from either the Balkans or Africa, therefore it can be deduced that a sizeable proportion of Swiss migrants associate with or practice the Islamic faith. Compared to the UK, we receive far more migrants worldwide, which consequently mean a sizeable migrant population who affiliate with either Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim or Sikh faiths. Somehow, over the course of our melting pot developing into a melting ocean, there has emerged an unwritten, unspoken code, so to speak, of “I’ve got your back, if you’ve got mine”. The second a Muslim would have been denied citizenship based upon her wearing of the hijab, the Sikh would nervously fidget at his turban, whilst the Jew worriedly adjusting his kippa, and the Catholic nun anxiously twitching at her habit. What happens to one religious group in the UK (and I say this specifically with limitation to cases surrounding religious practice and symbols) can have a potential knock-on effect on other religious groups which spurs on a feeling of collective identity and solidarity despite religious difference. Thus, for the sake of ‘church’-state harmony, such antagonisms are avoided all together. For the UK, centuries of uncomplicated migrant governance has led to our diverse community and given religious groups a sense of security though unity over their religious practices and symbols, a type of commonality and governance that is long overdue in Switzerland and necessary in order to bury, once and for all, the blatant discrimination against Muslims in Swiss society.