Swiss voters have approved a ban on the construction of new minarets, delivering a blow to the country's relationship with the Muslim world.

Around 57.5% of voters and all but four of the Alpine state's 26 cantons approved the proposal in the nationwide referendum, which was backed by the right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP).

The government and parliament had rejected the initiative as violating the Swiss constitution, freedom of religion and the country's cherished tradition of tolerance.

The government had said a ban could serve the interests of extremist circles. The United Nations human rights watchdog also voiced concern.

However, the government said it would respect the people's decision and declared construction of new minarets would no longer be permitted: Muslims in Switzerland are able to practise their religion alone or in community with others and live according to their beliefs just as before, it said in a statement.

Walter Wobmann, president of the initiative committee, said: We just want to stop further Islamisation in Switzerland, I mean political Islam. People may practice their religion, that is no problem. The SVP parliamentarian said added: We want to stop the further developments – minarets … Sharia law. The minaret is the power symbol of political Islam and Sharia law.

Muslim leaders from around the world, senior church figures, European politicians and human rights experts have deplored Switzerland's decision to ban the building of minarets.

Scandalous, said the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, while Babacar Ba, a senior official of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, warned of an upsurge in Islamophobia in Europe.

But far right leaders in Europe applauded the Swiss vote and called for parallel prohibitions in other countries.

In the Netherlands, the anti-Muslim Freedom party of Geert Wilders, which is steadily growing in popularity, called for a similar vote for the Dutch. It's the first time that people in Europe have stood up to a form of Islamisation, it declared.

The surprisingly high vote of 57% for the minaret ban put the Swiss government and establishment on the defensive, engaged in damage limitation. In Brussels, the Swiss justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, who opposed a ban, argued that the vote was neither against the Muslim community nor against Islam. She sought to explain the decision to EU interior ministers, some of whom were highly critical.

The Vatican denounced the ban as an infringement of religious freedom. Roman Catholic bishops in Swizerland issued a statement regretting the ban, accusing the rightwing Swiss People's party, which spearheaded the prohibition campaign, of caricaturing and exaggerating the alleged threat posed by Muslims, and also warned that the ban will not help Christians oppressed and persecuted in Islamic countries.

Under the rules of Switzerland's direct democracy, which leans heavily on single issue referenda, yesterday's vote compels the government to amend the constitution. The article defining church-state relations will acquire a new sentence stating: the building of minarets in Switzerland is forbidden.

But the government and parliament knows that this will breach the European convention on human rights and the UN charter proscribing discrimination on religious grounds and entrenching freedom of religion.

In response to a Swiss vote banning the construction of new mosque minarets, a group of Muslims this month went into a church building in eastern Turkey and threatened to kill a priest unless he tore down its bell tower, according to an advocacy group. Related

Three Muslims on Dec. 4 entered the Meryem Ana Church, a Syriac Orthodox church in Diyarbakir, and confronted the Rev. Yusuf Akbulut. They told him that unless the bell tower was destroyed in one week, they would kill him.

If Switzerland is demolishing our minarets, we will demolish your bell towers too, one of the men told Akbulut.

Fikri Aygur, vice president of the European Syriac Union, said that Akbulut has contacted police but has otherwise remained defiant in the face of the threats: He has contacted the police, and they gave him guards, he said. I talked with him two days ago, and he said, 'It is my job to protect the church, so I will stand here and leave it in God's hands.'