A writer for the Middle East Eye website says the Austrian government is heavily funding institutions that marginalize the majority of Muslims inside the country and support new groups representing "liberal Islam" there.
Writer Farid Hafez added in an article that European nation-states have tried in recent years to have greater control over the religious perception of their Muslim populations.
After a preliminary agreement in the decades prior to the "Islam of the embassy", which essentially left religious issues to the governments of countries whose Muslims had emigrated to Europe, a new approach emerged in the late nineties – especially after September 11, 2001 – in which the interior ministries of European countries tried to assert control over their Muslim nationals in order to create German, French, Dutch, and other forms of "national Islam."
New approach
The new approach sometimes shows the direct involvement of states in these attempts, and ideas have often been supported by institutions and think tanks that play a large role in the corridors of power, including advocates of anti-Muslim policies.
Austrian Integration Minister Susan Raab is exporting the infamous version of the so-called map of Islam (French)
In Austria, the Political Islam Documentation Center was established, which the country's Muslim community warned could become a "monitoring institution," adding that in 2021 this center presented the infamous "map of Islam", which Austrian Integration Minister Susan Raab exported to other European countries.
After the Vienna Forum on Combating Discrimination and Extremism in the Context of Integration, which attracted the participation of 11 countries, held its second annual meeting in December 2022 and after the courts rejected several key government projects – from banning headscarves in schools to closing mosques, and rejecting parts of the nefarious racist "Luxor Process" (searching the homes of Muslims whose views do not appeal to the Austrian state) – a new initiative has emerged on the horizon.
Austrian Islamic Conference
The Forum of Muslims in Austria was created, and plans for an Austrian Islamic conference modeled after the German model were recently announced, which was heavily criticized as a way to discipline German Muslims.
The forum has been heavily criticized by Austria's Muslim community for not having legitimacy and wanting to institutionalize dialogue on Islam without involving central actors in the country's Muslim life.
Hafez concluded that this seems to have less to do with what "good Islam" should stand for than to how optimal authorities control what they consider a potential part of the population, which poses a threat.