Austria\u2019s right-wing government plans to shut seven mosques and could expel dozens of imams in what it said was \u201cjust the beginning\u201d of a push against radical Islam and foreign funding of religious groups that Turkey condemned as racist.<\/p>\n
The coalition government, an alliance of conservatives and the far right, came to power soon after Europe\u2019s migration crisis on promises to prevent another influx and restrict benefits for new immigrants and refugees.<\/p>\n
The moves follow a \u201claw on Islam\u201d, passed in 2015, which banned foreign funding of religious groups and created a duty for Muslim organisations to have \u201ca positive fundamental view towards (Austria\u2019s) state and society\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolitical Islam\u2019s parallel societies and radicalising tendencies have no place in our country,\u201d said Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who, in a previous job as minister in charge of integration, steered the Islam bill into law.<\/p>\n
Standing next to him and two other cabinet members on Friday, far-right Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache told a news conference: \u201cThis is just the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Austria, a country of 8.8 million people, has roughly 600,000 Muslim inhabitants, most of whom are Turkish or have families of Turkish origin.<\/p>\n
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s spokesman said the new policy was part of an \u201cIslamophobic, racist and discriminatory wave\u201d in Austria.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Austrian government\u2019s ideologically charged practices are in violation of universal legal principles, social integration policies, minority rights and the ethics of co-existence,\u201d Ibrahim Kalin tweeted.<\/p>\n
The ministers at the news conference said up to 60 imams belonging to the Turkish-Islamic Union for Cultural and Social Cooperation in Austria (ATIB), a Muslim group close to the Turkish government, could be expelled from the country or have visas denied on the grounds of receiving foreign funding.<\/p>\n
A government handout put the number at 40, of whom 11 were under review and two had already received a negative ruling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Austria\u2019s right-wing government plans to shut seven mosques and could expel dozens of imams in what it said was \u201cjust the beginning\u201d of a push against radical Islam and foreign funding of religious groups that Turkey condemned as racist. The coalition government, an alliance of conservatives and the far right, came to power soon after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33626,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33627,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33625\/revisions\/33627"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}