The group currently has about 500 members and hopes to win a total of 10,000 participants by the end of 2011, according to spokesman Qaasim Illi.
“We were surprised by the increase in the number of new members after Swiss voters approved a ban on the construction of the minarets in November,” he told a news conference on Friday.
There are an estimated 380,000 Muslims in Switzerland, making up about five per cent of the population.
The council, which was formally set up last October, is funded by membership fees and donations, said its president, Nicolas Blancho.
The group represents the orthodox Sunni Muslims and has launched a public information campaign to help re-shape the image of Muslims in Switzerland.
It seeks to win broad recognition among the Muslim community and help institutionalise the Islamic religion in Switzerland, officials said.
In the wake of the anti-minaret vote the group organised a rally in Bern which was attended by an estimated 700 people but did not have the support of any of Switzerland’s main Muslim groups.
The justice ministry did not invite the Islamic Central Council to roundtable talks with Muslim organisations in December.
The Swiss Council of Religions, a platform for the main Christian churches as well as the Muslim and the Jewish communities, told swissinfo.ch that it would continue to cooperate with the two established Muslim organisations.
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Muslim preacher banned from public rally
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Pierre Vogel is not allowed to travel to Switzerland because his presence is considered a danger for public law and order, according to the Federal Migration Office. He wanted to encourage Muslims in Switzerland to come out of their social isolation and help reduce mistrust, he told Swiss newspapers. The demonstration by a group, the…
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Hisham Maizar, president of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Switzerland, told the Sunday newspaper Le Matin Dimanche that the goal of a single governing body was still far away. Maizar also said the country’s Muslims needed to cooperate with authorities in dealing with radical clerics. The federal government has also taken notice of the…
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The idea of a single body representing the country’s diverse Muslim groups is one of a number of hot topics doing the rounds in Switzerland, which is still reeling from the surprise anti-minaret vote two weeks ago. For Stéphane Lathion, head of a research group on Islam in Switzerland at Lausanne University, focusing on a…
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Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf met six representatives of Islamic organisations in Bern on Monday, to discuss the situation of Muslims in the light of the anti-minaret vote passed by the Swiss public on November 29. It was the third such meeting since the anti-minaret initiative was launched, but the first since it was passed. Follow-up…
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.