In the Daily Mail Michael Burleigh opines: “The Swiss have been forced to recognise that many of their people are worried about Islam’s unquestioned, undemocratic encroachments into Western society. And unless our own Government now takes note and instigates a rational but robust debate on the subject, we can expect far more trouble ahead.”

Over at the Times the inimitable Taj Hargey assures us that the ban “does not infringe the religious liberty of Swiss Muslims. Minarets remain emblematic of mosques in the Muslim heartlands but there is no theological reason why houses of worship in the West have to incorporate such towers”.

Indeed, according to Hargey, if there is a rise in bigotry against Muslims across Europe they themselves are primarily to blame: “Only when Muslim immigrants and converts in Europe reject the twisted ideology of a fundamentalist male clergy will the chief causes of anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe recede.”