By Nikos Tsinakis

The Austrian government announced earlier on Friday, that it’ll expel 60 imams and close down 7 mosques with funding traced back to Turkey.

Although the Announcement came from Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who has been targeted by left wing media ever since he won the Austrian election last year, this move simply has nothing to do with new policies enacted by his right-leaning government. This announcement is rooted in a 2015 law that forbids foreign funding of religious institutions.

However, it is clear that Kurz does intend to uphold all pre-existing laws to the benefit of his country at maximum capacity, even if it means eventually evoking protest from the EU, no doubt, on the basis of “racism”. “Political Islam’s parallel societies and radicalizing tendencies have no place in our country,” said Kurz at a press conference. His vice chancellor, Heinz-Christian Strache, added ominously, “This is just the beginning.”

turkish-islamists
The turks as a collective, have more loyalty towards Erdogan than any European government they are living under


Turks have no place in Europe

Forty of the Imams under investigation are apart of the “Turkish-Islamic union of social cooperation” an organisation funded by the Turkish government and helps with managing the Turkish mosques in the country, sounds dystopian enough? There are currently 600,000 muslims living in Austria, a country with only a population of 8.8 million, the vast majority of these muslims also happens to be Turkish. Turks at large, simply do not assimilate to the European countries they’re living in, we know this from the widely mobilized demonstrations in European cities in support of Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the Turkish elections. Erdogan’s government has been increasingly theocratically aligned after carrying out a purge in the Turkish government and military following a failed coup in 2016. The seven mosques in question, have been accused by the Austrian authorities after an investigation for practicing Salafism, an extremist brand of Islam. This is an alarming reflection on what potentially could be a large number of muslims in the country are also actively practicing extremist Islam.


A case of radical Islam allying with social justice

Turkish President Erdogan has condemned the move with immediate urgency, his spokesman Ibrahim Khalid decried the Austrian government’s decision on Twitter as “a reflection of the Islamophobic, racist and discriminatory wave in this country” and “an attempt to target Muslim communities for the sake of scoring cheap political points.” – Speaking of cheap political points, it’s kinda awfully ironic that this accusation is coming from the same person using the word “Islamophobia” to seek assistance from the western left by using these invented terms. News Flash: Islamophobia implies people are afraid of muslims, that’s not how this works, the bans exist because Islam is incompatible with the west.

If Islamophobia means not wanting Turkish state-funded extremist imams to radicalize a population over half a million, then count me in.