A couple of weeks ago, the Swiss voted to ban the building of any more minarets – there are only four in all of Switzerland.

The right-wing Swiss People's Party's (SVP) advertising campaign, which proposed the ban, included a poster featuring a menacing black burkha-clad figure standing in front of an arsenal of black minarets that looked like missiles rising up from a Swiss flag.

Prior to the campaign, no mosque had ever been attacked in Switzerland – now, many have.

The SVP says minarets are a sign of "Islamic power". It's part of a growing campaign across Europe and here in the UK, spreading fear that Muslims are "taking over".

Mosques are simple places of prayer that are paid for entirely by the communities they serve – many are poorly resourced. Most here in the UK are small converted terraced homes, shops, halls, pubs and the like. All of them are filled beyond capacity, every week, for Friday afternoon prayer. They are not symbols of anything, except practical places of worship.

The minaret is not a crucial element of the design of the mosque; neither is the dome. Both, traditionally, serve a practical purpose; one for the Muezzin to climb to the top to make a call to prayer, and the other for better acoustics inside the hall. A mosque is still a mosque without either. In principle, banning minarets is no big deal for Muslims. But there is still concern.

Would we equally restrict the design of, say, synagogues, temples or churches? Some see Muslims here being given special favours: "Why are there no churches in Saudi Arabia?" they ask.

It's true, there aren't any; but it's for the same reason there are no mosques in Vatican City. Both are holy sites for their respective faiths. A Hindu wouldn't ask to build a temple at Lourdes, for example.

Churches exist in every other Muslim nation on Earth; Pakistan alone has hundreds of churches and cathedrals. In Qatar, the Emir donated the land on which a $7 million church was built. Egypt is home to some of the oldest Christian communities on Earth – and so on and so forth.

For some though, even my column is a sign of "Muslims taking over". I assure you, there's no such agenda. True Islam conquers hearts, not walls. God asks in the Quran: "If it had been the Will of your Lord that all the people of the earth should believe; all the people of the earth would have believed! Would you then compel humankind against their will to believe?"

I ask for nothing more than to worship freely. I would support the same right for anyone, anywhere.