Religious discrimination remains a critical barrierto the participation of Muslims in European society, as was underlined by the recent Swiss vote on the ban of minarets, a study published Tuesday said, according to DPA news agency. A Europe-wide report by the London-based Open Society Institute (OSI) said ‘effective and sustainable measures' were urgently needed to tackle religious discrimination – a problem that had worsened in recent years. “Europe needs to live up to its promise of an inclusive, open society,” said Nazia Hussain, director of OSI At Home in Europeproject. “Switzerland's recent ban on minarets is a clear sign that anti-Muslim sentiment is a real problem in Europe,” she said. Too many Europeans believed that religious identity was somehow a barrier to integration, while the majority of Muslims surveyed identified strongly with the city and country they lived in. The majority of Muslims in European countries wanted to live in mixed communities, and not in segregated neighborhoods, the report found. “But at the same time they don't believe that their fellow countrymen or the wider society sees them as either German or Frenchor English,” Hussein told the BBC.
