Documentation Center. Starting in 2020, a new institution should observe ideology, mosques, clubs or content on social media.

Political Islam Austria

The Federal Government wants to take political Islam more seriously and to create a documentation center. The model for this position should be the DÖW, the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance, or the Federal Office for Sectarian Affairs, as it was called on Saturday from the Federal Chancellery.

Above all, the center is supposed to observe ideologies that undermine democracy and the rule of law or motivate it to violence and terror. It is to be created as an independent institution in cooperation with various ministries (such as the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Foreign Affairs). There, the preventive and educational work on this topic should be better coordinated and basic work should be done, and concrete threats should also be identified in order to inform the competent authorities. The work should be accompanied by a scientific advisory board.

“Politicians are urged to protect our free society from political Islam and its excesses, such as anti-Semitism. We must not look the other way if our basic values such as democracy or equality are openly rejected “, but it needs resolute action, be it in education, in mosques and Islamic associations as well as in social media, as Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) explains these plans. The results of the latest anti-Semitism study would also underpin the need for action, according to the Chancellery.

Legal basis until summer. The position is to observe Islamist associations and organizations, as well as the spread of patriarchal courts of honor, of anti-integration content (including in mosques) and also Islamist ideas on social media or segregation in education by Islamist currents. By summer, the government wants to present law. Until then, experts should also be involved. At the beginning of 2020, according to government plans, the institution is to start its operational work.