The provincial parliament in the southern Austrian province Carinthia called on its provincial government to prepare legislation banning the construction of mosques or minarets. The province’s governor, the populist former leader of the rightist Freedom Party, Joerg Haider, had repeatedly called for anti-Muslim measures along those lines.
The proposal was adopted with the votes of the conservative People’s Party, Freedom Party, and the support of the Alliance for Austria’s Future, an equally rightist breakaway party from the Freedom Party, founded by Haider. Alliance floor leader Kurt Scheuch said his party wanted to prevent the creeping Islamization by radical forces. “We prefer churchbells to the muezzin’s chants,” he said.
Carinthia’s Social Democrats and Greens, who had voted against the measure, slammed the proposal as a move to “prevent integration (and) hinder religious freedom” and called it an “open attack on democracy and the rule of law.” The Social Democrats pointed out that currently there were no plans for for building mosques in the province, unmasking the proposal as an attempt to “attract the right-wing vote,” Social Democrat floor leader Peter Kaiser said.
A far-right Danish political party controversially depicted the prophet Muhammad on election material yesterday. Now a high-profile Danish-Muslim politician has hit back with a poster lampooning the move.
“In a few days time a cluster of far-right groups under the name the Stop the Islamisation of Europe alliance will hold rallies in London, Copenhagen and Marseilles to demand an end to what they call ‘the overt and covert expansion of Islam in Europe’. Although the events are likely to attract no more than a handful of protesters, their message resonates widely. On Saturday the rightwing People’s party, notorious for its virulent hostility to ethnic minorities and Muslims, emerged as the victor in the Swiss elections, taking 29% of the vote, the best electoral performance by a party in the country’s elections since 1919.
Switzerland’s rightwing People’s party, accused of racism and fanning Islamophobia, strengthened its position as the country’s leading political force yesterday, gaining more than 2 percentage points to win a general election for the second time in a row, according to projections.
BERLIN — Members of a German neo-Nazi party demonstrated Saturday in Frankfurt against the construction of a mosque in an area which already has two.
Peter Beaumont warns against the threat from Christoph Blocher and the racist Swiss People’s Party (SVP):
From London’s docklands to the rolling hills of Tuscany, from southern Austria to Amsterdam and Cologne, the issue of Islamic architecture and its impact on citadels of “western civilisation” is increasingly contentious.
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is considering a proposal to re-open a disused cemetery as a multi-faith burial ground. Predictably, the British National Party has responded with a typical piece entitled “