Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker declared that his administration intends to introduce a law to ban political Islam.
“I am saying quite clearly: I do not want our children and grandchildren to grow up in an Islamic state. Everyone in Austria can believe what they want and in what they want,” he wrote on social media. “This freedom of belief 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, this freedom ends. Just as we protect the practice of religion, we must also protect our democracy.”
Similarly, Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) State Secretary Jörg Leichtfried said, according to a translation, that a nation must defend itself “when a religion is misused to attack this state governed by the rule of law and this democracy.”
Integration Minister Claudia Bauer also vowed to protect Austria from Islamic infiltration. “Everyone in Austria can believe what they want. But where believers & non-believers, women & men are distinguished, courts or democratic institutions are not respected & this is politically justified, a line has been crossed – right [Stocker]!” she said on X. “We will combat political Islam with all means available.”
Austria launched the Documentation Center for Political Islam (Dokumentationsstelle Politischer Islam) in 2020, where it defines “political Islam” as “an ideology of supremacy that aims at influencing or changing society, culture, state, policy, politics, and/or polity according to such values and norms that are declared as Islamic by the actors of Political Islam, but are not shared by the majority of Muslims and are in clear contradiction to the rule of law, democracy, and human rights.”
