The Swiss People's Party, also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre, is a national-conservative and right-wing populist political party in Switzerland. Chaired by Marcel Dettling, it is the largest party in the Federal Assembly, with 62 members of the National Council and 6 of the Council of States.
Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss Muslim academic, philosopher, and writer. He was a professor of contemporary Islamic studies at St Antony's College, Oxford and the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, He is a senior research fellow at Doshisha University in Japan, and is also a visiting professor at the Université Mundiapolis in Morocco. He was a visiting professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, and used to be the director of the Research Centre of Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE), based in Doha. He is a member of the UK Foreign Office Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief. He was listed by Time magazine in 2000 as one of the seven religious innovators of the 21st century and in 2004 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and was voted by Foreign Policy readers as one of the top 100 most influential thinkers in the world and Global Thinkers. Ramadan describes himself as a "Salafi reformist".
Gisèle Littman, better known by her pen name Bat Ye'or, is an Egyptian-born, British-Swiss author and historian, who argues in her writings that Islam, and its perceived anti-Americanism, anti-Christian sentiment and antisemitism hold sway over European culture and politics.
Robert Bruce Spencer is an American anti-Muslim author and blogger, and one of the key figures of the counter-jihad movement. Spencer founded and has directed the blog Jihad Watch since 2003. In 2010 he co-founded the organization Stop Islamization of America with Pamela Geller.
Walter Mittelholzer was a Swiss aviation pioneer. He was active as a pilot, photographer, travel writer, as well as of the first aviation entrepreneurs.
Islam in Switzerland has mostly arrived via immigration since the late 20th century. Numbering below 1% of total population in 1980, the fraction of Muslims in the population of permanent residents in Switzerland has quintupled in thirty years, estimated at just above 5% as of 2013. The Turks and those from The Balkans make up the largest group. There is also a large North African community and a significant Middle Eastern community. This is due to the fact that in the 1960s and 1970s, Switzerland encouraged young men from Yugoslavia and Turkey to come as guest workers. Initially these young men were only planning on staying in Switzerland temporarily, however, revised Swiss immigration laws in the 1970s permitted family regrouping. Consequently, these men ended up staying in Switzerland as these new laws allowed the wives and children of these young men into the country. Since this time period, most of the Muslim immigration to Switzerland stems from asylum seekers arriving primarily from Eastern Europe. In more recent years, there has been migration from Turkey, the Balkans, Iraq, Syria, Morocco, Somalia, and Tunisia.
"Islamofascism" is a term that is a portmanteau of the ideologies of fascism and Islamism or Islamic fundamentalism, which advocates authoritarianism and violent extremism to establish an Islamic state, in addition to promoting offensive Jihad. For example, Qutbism has been characterized as an Islamofascist and Islamic terrorist ideology.
Jihad Watch is an American far-right Anti-Islam blog operated by Robert Spencer. A project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Jihad Watch is the most popular blog within the counter-jihad movement.
David Gerald Littman was a British Jewish activist best known for organising the departure of Jewish children from Morocco when he was 28. He then worked as a lobbyist at the United Nations in Geneva and was also an historian. He was married to Bat Ye'or.
The federal popular initiative "against the construction of minarets" was a successful popular initiative in Switzerland to prevent the construction of minarets on mosques. In a November 2009 referendum, a constitutional amendment banning the construction of new minarets was approved by 57.5% of the participating voters. Only three of the twenty Swiss cantons and one half canton, mostly in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, opposed the initiative.
Lukas Reimann is a Swiss politician. Reimann is a member of the Swiss People's Party (SVP) and a National Council. He resides in Wil in the Canton St. Gallen.
Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), also known as the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), is an anti-Muslim, pro-Israel American counter-jihad organization known primarily for its controversial, Islamophobic advertising campaigns. The group has been described as extremist and far-right. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lists SIOA as an anti-Muslim hate group.
Freedom – Civil Rights Party for More Freedom and Democracy, known as The Freedom for short, was a political party in Germany which identified as conservative-liberal and classical liberal. Described as right-wing populist, the party was known for its criticism of Islam.
Counter-jihad, also known as the counter-jihad movement, is a self-titled political current loosely consisting of authors, bloggers, think tanks, street movements and so on linked by beliefs that view Islam not as a religion but as an ideology that constitutes an existential threat to Western civilization. Consequently, counter-jihadists consider all Muslims as a potential threat, especially when they are already living within Western boundaries. Western Muslims accordingly are portrayed as a "fifth column", collectively seeking to destabilize Western nations' identity and values for the benefit of an international Islamic movement intent on the establishment of a caliphate in Western countries. The counter-jihad movement has been variously described as anti-Islamic, Islamophobic, inciting hatred against Muslims, and far-right. Influential figures in the movement include the bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in the US, and Geert Wilders and Tommy Robinson in Europe.
Politically Incorrect is a mainly German-language counter-jihad political blog which focuses on topics related to immigration, multiculturalism, and Islam in Germany and Western societies. A condensed version of the weblog is available in English. The blog is one of Germany's oldest far-right sites. Much of its content is Islamophobic.
Anders Gravers Pedersen is a Danish anti-Islam activist. He is the chairman and founder of Stop Islamisation of Denmark (SIAD), and leader of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE). He also established transatlantic connections with Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and Stop Islamization of Nations (SION).
Heinz Gstrein was an Austrian-Swiss Oriental Orthodox theologian, foreign correspondent, non-fiction author and a lecturer at the University of Vienna.
The counter-jihad movement in France consists of various organisations and individuals such as Riposte Laïque and Republican Resistance, led by Pierre Cassen and Christine Tasin respectively, Observatory on Islamisation, and other groups such as those founded by Alain Wagner. The movement has cooperated with the Bloc Identitaire, Daniel Pipes and the Middle East Forum, Stop Islamisation of Europe, and has organised events such as the "Apéro Géant: saucisson et pinard", a happy hour gathering of wine and deli meat cold cuts whose ingredients include pork.
Christine Tasin is a French anti-Islam writer, activist and founder of the Republican Resistance. She has been convicted several times for inciting hatred against Muslims.
Pierre Cassen is a French writer and the founder of the anti-Islam news portal Riposte Laïque.
