Wangen Bei Olten Journal - A Swiss Treat for Muslim Diets Comes With an Aftertaste

Image via Wikipedia

By JOHN TAGLIABUE

WANGEN BEI OLTEN, Switzerland — Bertram Decker’s second-floor office in Nestlé’s big food plant here looks out over the town’s only minaret, a wooden turret topped with a gilt star and crescent.

The minaret, atop a Turkish cultural association, is one of only four in all of Switzerland, and it has a special place in the country’s recent history. It touched off a local scrap that in November led more than 57 percent of Swiss voters to approve a call for a constitutional amendment to ban minarets.

Here in Wangen, 61 percent approved the measure, which is a little curious, since Mr. Decker’s factory produces, among other things, packages of feuilleté, or puff pastry, that adhere to Islam’s ritual halal requirements.

Last year, the factory’s assembly lines churned out 100 million packages of pastry, up from 80 million a decade ago. Though halal products represent at most 3 percent of the total, Mr. Decker said, “We see now that it’s growing.”

On a wall near the entrance, he points to a certificate from the Grand Mosque in Paris certifying the factory as halal, or free of impure products like alcohol or pork. “The original certification was for two years,” said Mr. Decker, 41, a German who was brought in 18 months ago to manage the plant, part of the Swiss multinational Nestlé. “We just got an extension until 2012.”

As incomes rise in the Islamic world and Muslims migrate increasingly to Europe and the United States, Wangen’s halal production is part of a thrust by Nestlé to carve a niche in the global market for halal products, including coffee, baked goods, breakfast cereals and baby food. Halal products now account for $5 billion of Nestlé’s global sales.

But while Switzerland benefits from factories like this one selling its products to Muslim customers in many countries, it appears the Swiss are adamantly opposed to the construction of more minarets like the one down the street.

In some ways, Wangen wears this contradiction on its sleeve. When the Turkish club decided in 2006 to erect the minaret atop its clubhouse, local residents took the association to court to prevent construction, arguing that the minaret violated building codes. The case went to Switzerland’s highest court, which approved construction, though not because the minaret was a form of religious expression. “The court ruled on conformity to the building codes,” said Beat Frey, 50, a regional court judge who is also Wangen’s part-time mayor. “Not on freedom of religion.”

The decision was seized upon by conservative parties, above all the Swiss People’s Party of Christoph Blocher, a right-wing industrialist-turned-politician, who demanded a referendum on the future construction of minarets. Of course, all politics is local, and not just in Massachusetts. The vote in tiny Wangen, population 4,950, many local people said, was not the expression of intolerance it might have seemed.

“There were many reasons, not above all the Muslims among us,” said Mr. Frey, who himself voted in favor of minarets. “Yes, there was fear of political Islam, but people also wanted to send a message to the federal government in Bern,” whose opposition to the amendment was viewed as interference in local affairs.

“There was also fear of the unknown,” he said, adding that about 18 percent of the town’s population is foreign, though the largest group among them are native Germans from nearby.

Down at the Turkish cultural association, Mustafa Karahan, 50, sometimes feels under siege. “The problem is, people don’t know us,” he said over coffee. “If they did, there wouldn’t have been the referendum.”

In 2006, when the club was considering construction of a minaret, members organized an open house, and more than 500 people came. “When we dedicated the minaret, the local Protestant pastor spoke and several government officials came,” said Mr. Karahan, a teacher who migrated to Switzerland in 1980 and works in a machine shop.

But the controversy over the minarets provoked a backlash. As the date for the vote approached, stones were thrown at the clubhouse windows and a bag of pork products was hung on the door. Parking for club members along the nearby railroad was suddenly made off limits by railway officials (and remains so).

“They played politics with us, particularly regarding the minaret, to gain votes,” Mr. Karahan said. “They have damaged Switzerland’s image.”

Mustafa Bakci, 27, a chemist with a Swiss pharmaceuticals company, said the club was open to all nationalities, not just Turks. “Libyans, Saudis — it’s open for everyone,” said Mr. Bakci, who was born in Switzerland. “From A to Z.”

Many foreigners work in the Nestlé plant and at the town’s other big employer, Coop, a Wal-Mart-like retailer. “My sister-in-law works for Nestlé,” Mr. Bakci said.

Walter Leisi, 64, remembers well when in 1962 his father, a baker from Basel, decided to build a factory in Wangen to produce his packaged puff pastry, which had been such a hit at home. “We had three nationalities back then,” he said, recalling the starting work force of about 70 people. “Swiss, Italians and Spaniards.”

In 1972 the factory passed into Nestlé’s hands, but the younger Mr. Leisi, who also voted against the minaret ban, managed it until last year. Now there are 400 employees, about two-thirds non-Swiss. “Many Swiss think it’s not necessary for them to work nights,” he said.

Signs on factory walls are in numerous languages, including Albanian, Serbian, Italian and Turkish. During the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Mr. Leisi said, “I had a bad feeling; would there be knifings here? Down there they were killing each other, yet here we never had a problem.”

Most of the factory’s halal products are exported to France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim population. To meet growing demand, the factory runs three eight-hour shifts a day, Mr. Decker said, sometimes Saturdays.

How does Mr. Leisi explain the resistance to minarets in a town that lives in part by selling food to Muslims?

“The problem is you had a certain category of extremist on one side, and another on the other side,” he said, shaking his head.

Gesturing over his shoulder toward the Turkish club, he added, “One of the reasons, of course, was that little minaret over there.”