In November 2009 Swiss voters approved a popular initiative inserting into the federal constitution a prohibition on building new minarets. It passed with about 57 per cent of the vote against the recommendation of the federal government, parliament and the major churches, and it applied to a country that then had four minarets in total. The vote is instructive about the Swiss system rather than only about Islam: a constitutional amendment can be placed on the ballot by collecting signatures, so a measure that no institution supports can still become fundamental law.
The provision has been criticised by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance and has never been tested at the European Court of Human Rights, because applications brought immediately after the vote were declared inadmissible for want of a victim who had actually been refused permission. Everything else in Swiss religious law sits at cantonal level.
Most cantons recognise the Reformed and Catholic churches as bodies of public law and collect a church tax on their behalf, in several cantons from companies as well as individuals, which has been repeatedly challenged; Geneva and Neuchatel, shaped by a stricter separation, do not. Some cantons recognise the Christian Catholic Church and Jewish communities, and none has yet extended public law recognition to a Muslim body, which is the live question rather than the minaret clause.