Zurich city council has ruled that a poster showing missile-like minarets on a Swiss flag can be displayed ahead of a national referendum on whether to ban the building of minarets at mosques in Switzerland.

Zurich followed Lucerne and Geneva in arguing that the posters, which also feature a veiled woman with supposedly menacing eyes, were protected by free speech.

Basel and Lausanne have banned them saying they paint a racist, disrespectful and dangerous image of Islam.

The posters, which urge a ban on the building of minarets, are part of a campaign by the nationalist Swiss People's Party.

Zurich city council said it disapproved of the posters - which also feature a veiled woman with what could be seen as menacing eyes - because they portrayed Islam as threatening, negative and dangerous.

But officials said the posters had to be accepted as part of political free speech in the run-up to the November 29 vote.

The Swiss Federal Commission Against Racism said yesterday it viewed the billboards as an attack on all Muslims in Switzerland. This is a further step toward a dangerous polarization of the political debate, the commission said.

The posters argue that the construction of new minarets should be banned because they are a symbol of Islamic political conquest rather than religious freedom. So far, there are four minarets in Switzerland.

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.'

The European Court of Human Rights has rejected two cases brought by Muslims against Switzerland's constitutional ban on the construction of new minarets.

The court said it would not consider the cases because the plaintiffs cannot claim to be 'victims' of a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the court enforces. The plaintiffs had said the ban violated their religious rights, but judges in Strasbourg said they had not proven the ban had any concrete effect on the plaintiffs.

Switzerland held a referendum in November 2009 in which citizens voted to ban the construction of new minarets. The vote inserted a new line in the Swiss constitution stipulating that the construction of minarets is forbidden.

The Strasbourg court is due to consider three more cases on the minaret ban.