Austria’s government says it is preparing a ban on “political Islam,” a move that could also prevent organisations including the Muslim Brotherhood from operating in the country.
In an interview with Vienna’s Heute newspaper, Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said his administration intends to put forward a constitutional law targeting political Islam. “If religion is used politically, we must oppose it with all severity,” he said.
Stocker also reinforced the message on social media, writing: “Let me be clear: I do not want our children and grandchildren to grow up in an Islamic State.”
“In Austria, everyone can believe what they want and what they want. This freedom of faith is protected by our constitution. But where believers and non-believers are distinguished, where men and women are not equal, where our institutions, authorities and courts are not respected, that freedom ends. Just as we protect the practice of religion, we must protect our democracy.”
The proposal has drawn support from Integration Minister Claudia Bauer, who pledged to combat political Islam in Austria and across Europe “with all means possible, because radical Islam is the greatest danger of our time, for our Western democracy, for the freedom of girls and women and for everyone who wants to live their religion peacefully and freely.”
Austria’s Directorate of State Security and Intelligence (DSN) has specifically pointed to the Muslim Brotherhood as an example of political Islam, which it describes as efforts to inculcate Muslim practices in social and political structures with the long-term aim of establishing Sharia law or a Caliphate throughout the West.
It comes as the DSN has warned that the Muslim Brotherhood allegedly infiltrated the ranks of the DERAD association, which is supposedly intended to serve as a deradicalisation network. As a result of the apparent infiltration, the Interior Ministry has removed the DERAD from the government’s network of extremist prevention and deradicalisation groups.
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A report last year from French intelligence found that the Muslim Brotherhood was engaged in a decades-long “Western conquest strategy” stemming back to the 1950s.
The report claimed that the group had designed a “matrix of political Islamism adapted to be established” in Western nations, primarily through the infiltration of government and other societally significant institutions.
The intel paper specifically pointed to Germany and Austria as being other major hotspots for Muslim Brotherhood activity, given that they were “historically the first lands of establishment of the movement” in Europe.
In addition to institutional entryism, the Brotherhood was also said to be focused on enforcing strict Muslim practices within Islamic communities in the West, such as fasting during Ramadan and the veiling of women and girls. Last year, the Austrian government banned veils in schools for girls under the age of 14.
Austria, which has seen a major growth in its Muslim population in recent years, has unsurprisingly seen an increase in Islamism, with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution revealing 306 acts of Islamic extremism being recorded last year, in addition to 129 house raids and 40 arrests.