evidence: The rise of violent Islamist groups targeting the West spurred a hardening of attitudes towards Switzerland’s Muslim minority. "Before 9/11 it was the nationality that people focused on, after it became religion," says Önder Güneş, spokesperson of the Swiss Federation of Islamic Umbrella OrganisationsExternal link (FIDS). In the eyes of the wider Swiss population, the attacks turned migrants into Muslims, and Muslims into radicals, he explains. [...] The problematisation of Muslims also seeped onto the political stage. In 2009, Switzerland voted in a referendum to ban the building of minarets. This was followed by a vote to ban women from wearing both the burqa and niqab, two forms of Islamic dress that conceal a woman’s face, in public. Despite estimations that only a few dozen Muslim women in Switzerland wore such clothes, the ban was approved by a slim majority of 51.2% in March 2021. Both votes were triggered by members of the conservative, right-wing Swiss People’s Party. [...] Although these challenges are not new or unique to Switzerland, a young generation of Swiss Muslims is pushing back. While the first generation of Muslim immigrants that arrived in Switzerland saw this discrimination as being part and parcel of living in a foreign land, their children who identify as Swiss are far less accepting.