Category Archives: Austria

Pig’s head hung on mosque door in Vienna

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Kocatepe mosque vandalism

In a barbaric affront to Muslim sensibilities, part of a pig’s head and some pork tripe was attached to the door of a mosque in Vienna’s 21st district on Christmas day.

The imam of the Kocatepe mosque spoke to the Andadolu press agency about the incident, condemning the vandalism as an “unacceptable” act.

The head of the Turkish-Islamist Union in Vienna (ATIB), Fatih Karadaş, condemned the attack saying that “this is not an attack against Muslims but the whole of humanity. We, as Muslims, will preserve our calm and collective attitude.”

This is not the first incident of its type, as Austria’s Muslim community has been attacked several times this year in similar hate crimes. An Imam Hatip school in Vienna that concentrates on religious education was also vandalized. A pig’s head was left in front of the school’s door during Ramadan in early October.

And in August, a pig’s head was impaled on a fence at a construction site for a new islamic school.  It’s not known who left the pig’s head at the centre, but even if someone confesses there is little the police can do as nothing was damaged and therefore there are no criminal charges.

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Austrian Muslims accuse government of rights violations

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Austria’s Muslim organizations said the government violated the rights of an estimated 600,000 Muslims in the country after officials sent a proposed law, dubbed the “Islamic Bill,” to parliament without first consulting the Muslim community.

“The government has sent the bill to parliament without considering our viewpoint,” Mouddar Khouja, founder of Austrian Muslims Initiative, said at a press conference Monday. “The draft had to be examined during the Austrian Muslims Initiative meeting on Dec. 21.”

Khouja said Muslims are considered second class citizens in Austria and the government does not take into account the existing laws on religious freedoms and UN laws on freedom of religion and belief.

According to the bill, employing preachers from abroad would be prohibited. Imams would instead be trained at Austrian universities. Currently, some 300 imams work in the country, including 65 Turkish preachers. The proposed legislation also contains a new overseas funding ban.

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Muslim woman attacked at Vienna bank

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Selver SA 60-year-old Muslim woman was seriously injured after being attacked at a bank in Vienna, in an incident which appears to have been motivated by Islamophobia.

Pensioner Selver S. was waiting in a queue to collect her pension at a Bawag bank branch in Schönbrunner Strasse (Meidling) when a man approached her, insulted her and repeatedly shoved her, knocking her to the floor. She was taken to hospital, suffering a spinal injury.

A 40-year-old man was arrested outside the bank shortly afterwards.

Her son Engin told the Heute newspaper that she suffered a lumbar fracture and had to spend seven days in Hanusch hospital. She had to have an operation on her spine and is now being cared for at home by her son.

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Far-right leaders vow to ‘save Europe’ at French gathering

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Marine le Pen and Geert Wilders at Lyon conferenceRepresentatives of Eurosceptic and far-right groups from Italy to Bulgaria gathered at the National Front party conference in Lyon at the weekend to warn France and Europe of a “neo-Ottoman” onslaught of Islam-preaching, benefit-stealing migrants.

Digging through the history books, Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), warned that “Arab armies plundered Lyon in 725 and are now busy doing the same in Iraq and Syria”.

Strache went on to blast Europe’s mainstream parties for, among other things, stoking “mass immigration, ideological terror, gay marriage and gender theory”.

The Austrian far-right leader was one of seven foreign politicians invited by the National Front (FN) leader, Marine Le Pen, to showcase her so-called “Europe of nations” – which she hopes to build on the ruins of an increasingly unpopular EU.

“Our Europe stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals, not from Washington to Brussels,” she said, calling for closer ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and an end to “US domination”.

The weekend gathering capped a triumphant year for her party, which romped to victory in European elections with a whopping 25% of the vote.

Should France hold a presidential election next week, polls say Marine Le Pen would thrash her challengers in the first round of voting – but would likely come up short in a runoff vote.

Either way, analysts say there is a very real chance the FN, as it is known in France, may one day wield power in France.

Like the French far right, Le Pen’s foreign guests have thrived on the gloom and anxiety sweeping across Europe in the wake of the financial crisis.

Addressing the FN conference, they treated the audience to a mix of fear-mongering and unbridled optimism, claiming their impending victory would save Europe from the present apocalypse.

First to speak was Geert Wilders, the platinum blond leader of Dutch Islamophobic party PVV, who hailed Marine Le Pen as “France’s next president”.

“Just like you, we don’t want foreigners to tell us they are masters in our country. We say: kick the criminals, the jihadists, the illegal migrants out,” he told the entirely Caucasian audience to rapturous applause.

Wilders, who left without listening to his colleague’s speeches, blasted the “betrayal of our multicultural elites, who destroy our identities and traditions”.

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FPÖ wants to target Muslim kindergartens that promote ‘violent ideology’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Heinz-Christian Strache with anti-mosque placardFreedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache was re-elected as Vienna’s state party chairman on Sunday and has put fighting radical Islam, crime on the U-Bahn network, and immigration top of his agenda.

In a speech at the Hofburg he said that religious education at kindergarten level needed to be carefully monitored “to counteract dangerous currents”.

According to statistics sourced by the FPÖ 43 percent of teachers responsible for Islamic religious education are against democracy and are in favour of introducing Sharia law. Five percent of Muslim students would consider joining jihad fighters in Syria and Iraq, and 66 percent of Muslims believe that women should not work, regardless of their education.

“We need to find out which kindergartens and schools are committed to a violent ideology and and may be sending young Muslims off to fight alongside Isis terrorists abroad,” a parliamentary motion tabled by the FPÖ said.

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Austria’s Muslims fear changes to historic Islam law

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sebastian Kurz (2)A row has broken out in Austria over government plans to overhaul the country’s century-old law on Islam. The new draft, which is partly aimed at tackling Islamist radicalism, forbids any foreign funding. But Austria’s official Islamic Community says it reflects a widespread mistrust of Muslims and fails to treat them equally.

Islam has been an official religion in Austria since 1912. The Islam law, the “Islamgesetz”, was brought in by the Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph, after Austria’s annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Under the law, Muslims, like Catholics, Jews and Protestants, are guaranteed wide-ranging rights, including religious education in state schools.

Carla Amina Baghajati from the Islamic Community says the old law has served as “a kind of a model in Europe” and done much to integrate and anchor Muslims into Austrian society. It shows how recognition of Islam makes Muslims feel accepted, she says. “Their loyalty towards the state comes automatically.”

Roughly half a million Muslims live in Austria today, around 6% of the population. Many of them have Turkish or Bosnian roots.

After more than 100 years, most agree that the Islam law needs to be updated to reflect the realities of modern Austria. But some parts of the government’s draft legislation have caused controversy, in particular a proposed ban on any foreign funding for mosques or imams. The Islamic Community says that does not fit with the principle of equality.

But Austria’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration Sebastian Kurz told Austrian Radio (ORF) that the ban was a necessary step. “With other religions, there is not the challenge that we have to fear influences from abroad and therefore have to be stricter with financing,” he said. “We want an Austrian form of Islam. Every Muslim in Austria should be able to practise his religion properly, but we don’t want influence and control from abroad.”

Relations between Muslims and Austria’s Catholic majority have been relatively calm, compared with many other European countries. But there are tensions.

The far-right Freedom Party, which has seen a surge of support, has taken to warning against what it calls “Islamisation”. At a Freedom Party Oktoberfest, Vienna district councillor Helwig Leibinger said many Muslims in Vienna were too foreign. “They cannot be integrated very well, because the women wear the burka or something like that and they don’t want to be real Austrians. They try to be Turkish.”

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Austria unveils new law on Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sebastian KurzAustria called on Thursday for standardized German-language translations of the Koran and moved to prohibit foreign funding of Muslim organizations on its soil in a draft law aimed in part at tackling Islamic extremism.

The bill will overhaul a 1912 law governing the status of Austrian Muslims, prompting concern from a major local Islamic body, which saw it mirroring widespread mistrust of Muslims.

The initiative comes at a time of robust support for the far-right in Austria and also alarm over reports of Muslims from the small, neutral country joining Islamist militant forces fighting in the Middle East.

“The clear message should be that there is no contradiction between being a faithful Muslim and a proud Austrian,” said Foreign Affairs and Integration Minister Sebastian Kurz, a member of the conservative People’s Party.

“If you don’t have orderly legal regulation … this can always bring dangers (of extremism). In this sense, if you like this is maybe a part of prevention,” he told reporters.

He added that Sharia, or Islamic law, had “no place here”.

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Austrian far-right activist convicted of inciting hatred against Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ja zu Österreich ohne Minarette

Two weeks ago an Austrian far-right activist, named by the Stoppt die Rechten website as Michael F., received a 5-month suspended prison sentence for incitement, as a result of anti-Muslim comments he had posted on the “JA!! zu: Österreich ohne Minarette!!!” (YES!! to Austria without Minarets!!!) Facebook page.

These comments included references to “Muslim scum” and to “Muslims who live here at our expense and only breed like rats”.

Stoppt die Rechten points out that the “JA!! zu: Österreich ohne Minarette!!!” Facebook page has featured comments that are even more inflammatory than Michael F.’s , and notes that the admins have been urgently deleting them. It asks why the authorities have taken no action over this.

“JA!! zu: Österreich ohne Minarette!!!” was launched in 2009 by Robert Faller, a founder and leader of the now reportedly defunct Nationale Volkspartei. In 2012 Faller was given a suspended 18-month sentence for breaching Austria’s constitutional ban on National Socialist activity.

Despite its clear neo-Nazi links, his Facebook page has attracted over 16,000 likes, including from prominent members of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), which claims to be a mainstream political party with no connection to fascism.

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Muslim woman attacked on Vienna train

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Zeliha CicekA 37-year-old Muslim woman from Vienna has complained to police after being attacked by a woman whilst travelling on Vienna’s metro.

She believes that the woman, who hit her in the face, did so because she was wearing a headscarf. Police said they believed the attacker was “disturbed”.

Zeliha Cicek is the third Muslim to have been assaulted in Vienna in the last month.

Cicek, a school teacher and mother of three children, is ethnically Turkish. She said she was talking to her sister on an U3 underground train on her mobile phone when the woman started shouting at her in English. “I calmly told her she could speak to me in German and suddenly she stood up and slapped me in the face. I dropped my phone and it broke, I was so shocked,” she said.

An English man came to Cicek’s aid but the angry woman scratched his face. She got out of the train at Stephansplatz – and despite Cicek screaming that she had attacked her the woman was able to flee without being stopped.

Cicek told the Kurier newspaper that she didn’t believe that the woman was drunk or mad. “The English man also thought that she had a problem with me wearing the headscarf,” she said.

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Islamophobic attack on 84-year-old woman in Vienna

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An 84-year-old woman originally from Turkey wearing a traditional headscarf was kicked to the ground on Thursday afternoon in an attack that was clearly motivated by anti-Islamic sentiments, according to a press release from Austria’s Islamic Religious Community Association (IGGiÖ).

Police confirmed that they received a report of the attack in the Favoriten area of Vienna, and are currently investigating. The perpetrator was a 30 to 35-year-old man who spoke and insulted the woman using a strong Viennese dialect.

Another nearby woman was also knocked down by the man, according to reports. Nearby teenagers who came to the assistance of the old woman were unable to prevent the man from escaping after committing the assault.

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