As jihadist plots continue to be uncovered from Glasgow to New Jersey, it is plain that no place can be considered entirely safe. That includes placid, would-be neutral Switzerland, where a series of incidents and controversies in recent months points to a small but untiring Saudi-sponsored Islamist presence--and to a growing determination to resist its excesses on the part of some Swiss citizens and the Swiss authorities.

Switzerland has more than 300,000 Muslims--some 4.3 percent of the population--few of whom are of Arab descent. Most came as migrants or refugees from the former Yugoslavia (57 percent) or Turkey (20 percent). Yet the small minority who are Arabs (5 percent) have made their mark.

The influential Geneva Islamic Center was founded as long ago as 1961, with roots in the international Islamist movement. Its leader, Said Ramadan, had been expelled from Nasser's Egypt for ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, founded by his father-in-law, Hassan al-Banna. Ramadan also helped create the World Muslim League, funded by the Saudi establishment for the purpose of spreading Wahhabism around the world. Today, Ramadan's sons Tariq, intellectual superstar of European Islamism, and Hani, head of the Geneva Islamic Center, continue to serve the cause.

But the Islamic Center is not the only Islamist institution in the Swiss capital. There is also the Grand Mosque of Geneva, which has undergone sweeping leadership changes in recent months. It has a new director, fresh from Jeddah, who suddenly fired four executives at the end of March. The Swiss daily Le Temps reported

The new imam at the mosque is Youssef Ibram, a Moroccan who studied Islamic law for six years in Saudi Arabia. He is remembered in Switzerland for his part in a public controversy about the stoning of adulterers. In 2004, in an interview with the Swiss French magazine Coopération, he said, "Regarding stoning, I cannot be against it since it is included in the Islamic law." The ensuing flap prompted Ibram to resign from his position as imam of the Islamic Center in Zurich. Ibram is also a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, a transnational group made up mostly of non-European Islamists close to the Muslim Brotherhood and headed by Al Jazeera star Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi. This body takes upon itself to assess the conformity of European laws to Islam.

Meanwhile in Bern, plans were announced in May to build an Islamic center including a museum, a luxury hotel, a conference center, and a mosque, at a cost of up to $50 million. The project raised even some Muslim eyebrows. In particular, Saida Keller-Messahli, founder of the Zurich-based Forum for a Progressive Islam, told Le Temps she was concerned about the lack of transparency regarding the benefactors and initiators of the project, and that she did not see how the Bern Muslim community could raise such a sum without petrodollars from Saudi Arabia or Iran. Farhad Afshar, the Iranian who is spokesman for the organization planning to raise the funds for the project, denies this. By now, however, the question is moot: The other day the city of Bern turned down the development.