RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Berlin-based expert on Turkey, Ralph Ghadban, warns that the Islam being preached in Turkish-controlled mosques in Europe is a “Sharia Islam with strong Turkish-nationalist overtones” that calls for a “strict separation from Western individualistic values.”

In February 2016, the University of Vienna published study which found that Islamic kindergartens in the capital are dominated by “intellectual Salafists and political Islamists” who are contributing to the “theologically-motivated isolation” of Muslim pupils. The report calls into question claims by the IGGiÖ that anti-Western textbooks have been removed from Austrian schools.

Muslim students now outnumber Roman Catholic students at middle and secondary schools in Vienna, according to official statistics, which show that Muslim students are also on the verge of overtaking Catholics in Viennese elementary schools. The data confirms a massive demographic and religious shift in Austria, traditionally a Roman Catholic country.

The selection of an ethnic Turk to lead the Islamic Religious Community in Austria (Islamischen Glaubensgemeinschaft in Österreich, IGGiÖ), the primary representative of Muslims in the country, is being challenged by Muslim groups opposed to Turkey’s growing influence over the practice of Islam in Austria.

Ibrahim Olgun, a 28-year-old Austrian-born Islamic theologian with ties to the Turkish state, was quietly named on June 19 to replace 62-yer-old Fuat Sanac, who stepped down after serving as IGGiÖ president for five years.

Sanac, also a Turk, was reviled by Turkish authorities for helping the Austrian government draft a new Islam Law (Islamgesetz) that aims to promote an “Islam with an Austrian character.” The law, which was promulgated in February 2015, seeks to reduce outside meddling by prohibiting foreign funding for mosques, imams and Muslim organizations in Austria. It also stresses that Austrian law must take precedence over Islamic Sharia law for Muslims living in the country.

Observers worry that Olgun — a member of the Turkey-financed Turkish-Islamic Union for Cultural and Social Cooperation in Austria (ATIB), an influential group that has vowed to challenge the Islam Law at Austria’s Constitutional Court — will use his new position both to undermine the Islam Law and to increase further Turkey’s influence over Muslims in Austria.

At least eight Austrian Muslim groups (representing Albanian, Arab, Bosnian and Sufi Muslims) are challenging Olgun, who was selected by the IGGiÖ’s Shura Council (Schurarat), a rules committee (Shura is an Arabic word for consultation) whose five members all happen to be ethnic Turks.

IGGiÖ statutes require a person to be at least 35 years old to head the group, but the Shura Council secretly annulled that stipulation last December, according to Hassan Mousa, head of the Arab Religious Community in Austria (Arabischen Kultusgemeinde in Österreich). He said that Olgun’s selection was “undemocratic” and “illegal” and added that his ties to ATIB would shift IGGiÖ’s balance of power further in Turkey’s direction.

ATIB, an umbrella group that operates more than 60 mosques in Austria, is directly managed by the religious affairs attaché at the Turkish embassy in Vienna, and the imams of these mosques are Turkish civil servants. ATIB and its German counterpart, the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), are financed by the Turkish government’s Directorate for Religious Affairs, known in Turkish as Diyanet.

If Britain can forgive America the slights of the Obama era, and if Australia can forgive Britain hers, now is our chance to get the whole family back together. Europe loved Britain when she was submissive. We who share a common heritage can love her once again, very nearly unconditionally
Many of Australians no doubt still cringe at the humiliation of flying into the United Kingdom and having to file into the ‘non-EU’ queue for immigration and customs. Talk about ingratitude. Almost 100,000 Aussies were killed defending Britain from the Second and Third Reichs. Now the Germans get to sail through Heathrow while the grandsons of Gallipoli endure the distinct possibility of a complimentary cavity search. In 2015 the Tory MP Andrew Rosendell called for the creation of a line exclusively for ‘subjects of Her Majesty the Queen’, which, of course, failed. That was at the height of Europhilia among Britain’s elites.

Blood, history, culture: all these hallmarks of a nation’s conservatism were sacrificed at the altar of David Cameron’s One Europe liberalism. Now Britain is bidding goodbye, adieu, auf wiedersehen, and vaarwel to the European Union and David Cameron.

Europe, for that matter, is bidding goodbye adieu, etc. to Britain. At the beginning of the Brexit campaign, EU President Jean-Claude Juncker told British ‘deserters’ that they would have to ‘face the consequences’ of striking out alone. Now he’s making good, insisting the they vacate the premises ‘as soon as possible, however painful that process may be’, and that there will be ‘no renegotiation’. The Leave campaign spent months reaffirming their love for Europe and promising to remain engaged with the EU. Juncker makes it abundantly clear that Europe’s love was altogether more conditional.

All Britain had to do was clear her throat and Junker began throwing her clothes out the window and changing the locks. Which, if anything, confirmed all of the Leavers’ suspicions: that Europe was only interested in them as a dumping-ground for migrant workers and a reserve bank for failed and failing states.

One can’t help but suspect that Australia played no small part in the Brits’ decision to dump Juncker and his cronies. The EU is an unhealthy relationship for all parties involved, but only the UK has any experience with healthy relationships. Of the European states, only the UK developed fruitful bonds with their former colonial possessions in Asia and the Americas – which is to say, only the UK belongs to a real international family rooted in a common history, common values, and, yes, sometimes, common blood. There was no one to be outraged at Germany when she gave special privileges to the British at her airports. No one ever loved Germany the way Australians – and Canadians, Americans, New Zealanders et al – love the United Kingdom, which is enough to feel slighted. Or, at least, no one loved them enough to tell them so.

Priests are afraid to talk about Jesus during mass. — Eva Hamberg, priest and professor, who in protest resigned from the priesthood and left the Church.

The Church of Sweden may be headed towards “Chrislam” — a merging of Christianity and Islam. Swedish priests, noting the religious fervor among the Muslims now living in Sweden, enthusiastically take part in various interfaith projects.

“There are reliable sources from Egypt, showing that the Saudi royal family is really a Jewish family that came from Iraq to the Arabian Peninsula sometime in the 1700s. They built an army with the aid of British officers fighting the Ottoman sultanate.” — Imam Awad Olwan, with whom a priest, Henrik Larsson, is cooperating in an interfaith project.

“The involvement that the Church of Sweden has shown for the vulnerability of Christian Palestinians, has been replaced with indifference to the ethnic cleansing of Christians in Syria and Iraq. In these countries, it is mostly Muslims who commit the atrocities, which is evidently enough to make the Church of Sweden concentrate on climate change and environmental issues instead.” — Eli Göndör, scholar of religion.

The Church of Sweden has departed from being a strong and stern state church. In the past, Swedes were born into it and, until 1951, no one was allowed to leave the church. These days, however, it is an institution that has very little to do with Christianity or Jesus. Sweden now, according to the World Values Survey, is one of the world’s most secular countries; every year a large number of Swedes leave the church.

It used to be that only atheists left the church; now it is the devout Christians that leave — in protest against the church’s increasingly questionable relationship to the Christian faith.

When, for example, the current Archbishop, Antje Jackelén, just before being appointed, participated in a question-and-answer session in the fall of 2013, and one of the questions was: “Does Jesus convey a more truthful image of God than Muhammad does?” surprisingly, the would-be archbishop did not immediately say yes, but instead involved herself in a long monologue about there being many ways to God. Evidently, this upset a lot of parishioners. A high-profile priest and professor, Eva Hamberg, resigned from the priesthood in protest and left the Church of Sweden.

“This made me leave faster,” she told the Christian newspaper, Dagen. “If the future Archbishop cannot stand by the Apostles’ Creed, but rather, rationalizes it, then secularization has gone too far.”