www.izrs.ch

Communiqué 29042010-0016

Bern, 15th Jumada al Awwal 1431 / 29th April 2010

Preaching in the local language or translation

The Islamic Central Council Switzerland (ICCS) takes note of the demand of the FDP that Islamic sermons were to be held or translated in the local language. In fact, this is already common practice in many major Swiss mosques. This is because the second and third generations of immigrant Muslims generally know the local language better than their original mother tongue. In addition, the attendees of the larger mosques are far from being only of Arab origin. Among them there are now many Asians and Muslims from the Balkans. Not to be underestimated is the increasing number of converts who are in most cases dependent on a translation.

The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS) speaks out in principle for the translation into the local language, if this is an endogenous demand of the respective community or its visitors. However, we are against a special legislation for Muslims. If applied, then the demand should be applied also to all other religious communities.

Also it should be noted that the Arabic part of the Friday sermon is a fix liturgical component of the Friday prayer. A sermon, which would be held only in local language, is from a theological point of view an illegal renovation.

Translation of religious scriptures in a local language

The Islamic Central Council or Switzerland (ICCS) also takes note of the demand that all religious texts to be translated into a local language. In principle, there are from our side no obstacles to this demand. It only should be noted that the Islamic Canon measures hundreds of shelf meters of volumes which for the biggest part were not yet translated even into English. But the effort to translate all the Arabic-Islamic books which are currently in the libraries of the Swiss Universities might result in costs of hundreds of millions and employ, carefully estimated, an entire department of professional translators for about one decade. Additionally there are still ongoing releases.
The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (ICCS) considers this demand as simply impossible to implement.

As far as the general demand of the FDP for more surveillance of private spaces, it should be noted that ideas relevant for states security is spread in the rarest cases in mosques. We don't know any mosque which would passively watch if such ideas were to be spread by a preacher. On the other hand it is well known that extremist indoctrination of any kind is today happening in majority via the internet.