Category Archives: Austria

Islam-bashing fails to boost support for Austria’s rightists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

City council elections in the south-eastern Austrian city of Graz on Sunday failed to result in significant support for a local candidate for the far-right Freedom Party (FP) who had lashed out against Islam in a highly controversial campaign.

The top-seeded FP candidate Susanne Winter scored only moderate wins for the party just days after she called the Muslim prophet Mohammed a “child molester” and called for Islam to be pushed “back where it belonged, beyond the Mediterranean Sea”.

Voters in Graz, however, seemed only moderately impressed by Winter’s Islam-bashing. Official results showed the FP gained 3.1 per cent, but remained below expectations with 11.1 per cent. Various polls had showed the party would score between 10 and 13 per cent.

Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache said the FP had reached their goal of getting into the double digits. Winter pursued her campaign “in the face of strong antagonism, defamation and scandalous threats of violence against her,” he was quoted as saying by the Austrian press agency.

Winter’s remarks were followed by a public outcry and triggered an intensive debate about Islamophobia in Austria. According to political analysts, the FP’s anti-Muslim campaign was a calculated gambit to appeal both to a radically xenophobe fringe among Austria’s electorate as well as those alienated by immigration.

The Islam-bashing turned out a “non-starter” for the rightists, with the conservative People’s Party and the Greens benefiting instead, analyst Wolfgang Bachmayer told the public broadcaster ORF.

Earth Times, 20 January 2008

Far-right groups launch anti-Islamisation campaign

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamisation of cities demoFar-right groups are calling for a ban on the building of new mosques as part of a new campaign to stop the spread of radical Islam in Europe. Belgium’s far-right Vlaams Belang party teamed up with radical groups from Austria and Germany on Thursday to launch a Charter to “fight the Islamisation of West-European cities”.

“We are not opposed to freedom of religion but we don’t want Muslims to impose their way of life and traditions over here because much of it is not compatible with our way of life,” Vlaams Belang’s Filip Dewinter told Radio Netherlands Worldwide. “We can’t accept headscarves in our schools, forced marriages and the ritual slaughter of animals.”

In particular, the coalition called for a moratorium on new mosques, which they say “act as catalysts for the Islamisation of entire neighbourhoods.”

“We already have over 6,000 mosques in Europe, which are not only a place to worship but also a symbol of radicalisation, some financed by extreme groups in Saudi Arabia or Iran,” Mr Dewinter explained, citing a large new mosque being built in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. “Its minarets are six floors high, higher than the illuminations of the Feyenoord soccer stadium!” he cried. “These kinds of symbols have to stop.”

However, it is unclear how the group plans to tackle perceived threats such as the teaching of the Koran, apart from holding rallies in European cities with high immigrant populations.

Aside from Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ), there was a notable absence of other political heavyweights during the press conference in the Flemish city of Antwerp. A spokesman for Italy’s Allianza Nazionale said he was unaware of the Charter, though his party too was looking at the issue of the new mosques. Dutch right-wing maverick politician Geert Wilders, who is currently producing a film about the danger of the Koran, also stayed away.

But Mr Dewinter seems unruffled by the paltry political support: “This movement may be small today but I am convinced it will grow into something major.”

Radio Netherlands, 17 January 2008

Austrian authorities investigate Islam-bashing by rightist lawmaker

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Susanne WinterVIENNA –  Remarks by a right-wing politician denouncing Islam and accusing the Prophet Mohammed of having been a paedophile provoked widespread outrage in Austria on Monday, with authorities investigating whether they constituted hate speech.

Susanne Winter, a candidate for the Freedom Party in local elections in Graz in south-eastern Austria, said on Sunday that Mohammed’s marriage to a 6-year-old girl would make the prophet a “paedophile in today’s system”. Speaking at a rally, Winter demanded that Islam should be “thrown back where it came from, beyond the Mediterranean Sea”.

Winter later justified her attacks. “There is widespread child abuse by Muslim men,” she was quoted as saying by the newspaper Oesterreich. “Why can’t I say this? That has nothing to do with hate speech.”

Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 14 January 2008

See also Al Arabiya  and Spiegel Online

Anti-Islamic party is playing with fear

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pro Koln (2)The four young men look unremarkable in Cologne’s downtown pedestrian zone. Now and then they press a pamphlet into somebody’s hand with a smile.

These young men handing out flyers work for an organization called “Pro Cologne”. They are gathering support in the otherwise liberal-minded and open city of Cologne to protest an enormous mosque slated for construction in the district of Ehrenfeld. Around 300 members of Pro Cologne have collected more than 20,000 signatures, and a few unsavory characters on the German far right hope to use their success as a way to win seats in state parliaments.

With a new political party called “Pro NRW” (Pro North-Rhine Westphalia), stemming from the Pro Cologne movement, two leaders named Markus Beisicht and Manfred Rouhs want to win enough votes to enter the state parliament in 2010. About a dozen Pro Cologne spinoffs are already preparing local campaigns across the state – in Gelsenkirchen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Essen and Bottrop, among other places. Where no new mosques are being planned, Beisicht says, the party will just fight smaller existing mosques.

The methods of the anti-mosque movement have been studied by far-right groups in other countries, like Austria’s FPÖ (“Austrian Freedom Party”) and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang (“Flemish Interest”) party. In November, Markus Beisicht gave a special presentation on the Cologne movement to FPÖ members in Graz. “We will lead our fight across Europe,” he told them, “whether it’s in Graz, Cologne or Vienna.” He’s invited friends from the FPÖ, Vlaams Belang and France’s National Front to a big “Anti-Islam Congress” in Cologne next September.

Spiegel Onlne, 3 January 2008

In Europe, where’s the hate?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gary Younge“Over the past year or so the rural Italian idyll of Colle di Val d’Elsa has played host to a bitter battle for Enlightenment values. On one side, the hamlet’s small Muslim community has raised a considerable amount of money to build a large mosque. Having gained the mayor’s approval, the Muslims signed a declaration of cooperation with the town hall and even planted a Christmas tree at the site as a good-will gesture.

“In response, other locals pelted them with sausages and dumped a severed pig’s head at the site. On a wall near the site vandals daubed: ‘No Mosque’, ‘Christian Hill’ and ‘Thanks to the communists the Arabs are in our house!!!’ Such is the central dynamic in European race relations at present.

“… the primary threat to democracy in Europe is not ‘Islamofascism’ – that clunking, thuggish phrase that keeps lashing out in the hope that it will one day strike a meaning – but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities in the name of racial, cultural or religious superiority.”

Gary Younge in the Nation, 20 December 2007

Austria: provincial parliament demands ban on mosque construction

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The provincial parliament in the southern Austrian province Carinthia called on its provincial government to prepare legislation banning the construction of mosques or minarets. The province’s governor, the populist former leader of the rightist Freedom Party, Joerg Haider, had repeatedly called for anti-Muslim measures along those lines.

The proposal was adopted with the votes of the conservative People’s Party, Freedom Party, and the support of the Alliance for Austria’s Future, an equally rightist breakaway party from the Freedom Party, founded by Haider. Alliance floor leader Kurt Scheuch said his party wanted to prevent the creeping Islamization by radical forces. “We prefer churchbells to the muezzin’s chants,” he said.

Carinthia’s Social Democrats and Greens, who had voted against the measure, slammed the proposal as a move to “prevent integration (and) hinder religious freedom” and called it an “open attack on democracy and the rule of law.” The Social Democrats pointed out that currently there were no plans for for building mosques in the province, unmasking the proposal as an attempt to “attract the right-wing vote,” Social Democrat floor leader Peter Kaiser said.

Earth Times, 25 October 2007

Campaigns for ban on mosques across Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pro Koln demoFrom London’s docklands to the rolling hills of Tuscany, from southern Austria to Amsterdam and Cologne, the issue of Islamic architecture and its impact on citadels of “western civilisation” is increasingly contentious.

The far right is making capital from Islamophobia by focusing on the visible symbols of Islam in Europe. In Switzerland it is the far-right SVP that is setting the terms of the debate.

Next door in Austria the far right leader Jörg Haider is also calling for a ban in his province of Carinthia, even though there are few Muslims and no known plans for mosques. “Carinthia,” he said, “will be a pioneer in the battle against radical Islam for the protection of our dominant western culture.”

In Italy the mayors of Bologna and Genoa last month cancelled or delayed planning permission for mosques after a vociferous campaign by the far-right Northern League, one of whose leaders, Roberto Calderoli, threatened to stage a “day of pork” to offend Muslims and to take pigs to “defile” the site of the proposed mosque in Bologna.

While the far right makes the running, their noisy campaign is being supported more quietly by mainstream politicians and some Christian leaders. And on the left pro-secularist and anti-clericalist sentiment is also frequently ambivalent about Islamic building projects.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne has voiced his unease over a large new mosque being built for the city’s 120,000 Muslims in the Rhineland Roman Catholic stronghold. A similar scheme in Munich has also faced local protests.

The Bishop of Graz in Austria has been more emphatic. “Muslims should not build mosques which dominate town’s skylines in countries like ours,” said Bishop Egon Kapellari.

Guardian, 11 October 2007

Haider calls for ban on mosque building

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jorg HaiderAustrian right-wing firebrand Joerg Haider said on Monday he plans to change building laws to prevent mosques and minarets being erected in his home province of Carinthia.

Haider, Carinthia’s governor, said he would ask its parliament to amend the building code to would require towns and villages to consider “religious and cultural tradition” when dealing with construction requests.

“We don’t want a clash of cultures and we don’t want institutions which are alien to our culture being erected in Western Europe,” Haider said in a statement. “Muslims have of course the right to practise their religion, but I oppose erecting mosques and minarets as centres to advertise the power of Islam.”

His spokesman, Stefan Petzner, said that there were no plans to restrict Muslim prayer rooms, as this would violate Muslims’ human rights, and the planned change applied only to dedicated mosques and minarets.

Muslims in Europe are meeting increasing resistance to plans for mosques that befit Islam’s status as the continent’s second religion after Christianity, with petitions in London, protests in Cologne, a court case in Marseille and violence in Berlin.

However, while all those places have significant Muslim minorities, Haider’s Carinthia has the second lowest share of Muslim citizens of all Austrian provinces – 11,000 out of a population of around 400,000, a Muslim spokesman said.

“It’s a ridiculous statement to say he fears a clash of civilisations (in Carinthia),” said Omar al-Rawi, a centre-left lawmaker who is spokesman for the Austrian Muslims’ Initiative. “We don’t know of any mosque plans there. His move is meaningless, populist, racist and anti-Islamic,” he added.

Reuters, 27 August 2007

Islamophobia colours Austrian elections

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Islamophobia is coloring the election campaigns of right-leaning parties, vying to court the votes of anti-immigrant voters in the October parliamentary polls. “Far-right candidates play Islamophobia and xenophobia because they do not have real political programs,” Tarafa Baghajati, Deputy Chairman of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), told IslamOnline.net.

Amid the aggressive campaigns, an explosive charge was planted outside the Austrian Muslim Youth (MJO) building in Vienna on Monday, but it was destroyed in a controlled explosion. A neo-Nazi slogan found on the package read “July 4 1926, Weimar” – an apparent reference to a key meeting that allowed Hitler to increase his control over the Nazi party.

In pamphlets widely circulated in the streets and election booths, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) dismisses Islam as a threat to the Christian identity of Austria. It claims that several parties, which it did not name, were trying to Islamize Europe and render its natives a minority in their own countries.

One of the FPÖ ads replaces the cross atop the famous Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, the oldest church in the country, with an Islamic crescent with the comment: “This is the true hidden desire of Muslims.” Another one shows a group of hijab-clad woman with a comment that Austria must be a social state not a country of immigrants.

Islam Online, 14 September 2006