Islamophobia is coloring the election campaigns of right-leaning parties, vying to court the votes of anti-immigrant voters in the October parliamentary polls. “Far-right candidates play Islamophobia and xenophobia because they do not have real political programs,” Tarafa Baghajati, Deputy Chairman of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), told IslamOnline.net.
Amid the aggressive campaigns, an explosive charge was planted outside the Austrian Muslim Youth (MJO) building in Vienna on Monday, but it was destroyed in a controlled explosion. A neo-Nazi slogan found on the package read “July 4 1926, Weimar” – an apparent reference to a key meeting that allowed Hitler to increase his control over the Nazi party.
In pamphlets widely circulated in the streets and election booths, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) dismisses Islam as a threat to the Christian identity of Austria. It claims that several parties, which it did not name, were trying to Islamize Europe and render its natives a minority in their own countries.
One of the FPÖ ads replaces the cross atop the famous Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, the oldest church in the country, with an Islamic crescent with the comment: “This is the true hidden desire of Muslims.” Another one shows a group of hijab-clad woman with a comment that Austria must be a social state not a country of immigrants.
“This is a conference of appeasement to the communities which harbour individuals who will stop at nothing to bomb our cities and kill innocent people to force their religion on an unwilling population…. Thousands of Londoners and visitors alike still bear the physical and mental scars of the 7/7 Islamic terror attacks on the Tube yet our well paid senior police officers sit down to cornflakes and toast with so-called community leaders representing ethnic and religious minority groups that are prepared to bomb, kill, rape and maim to get their way.”
Nick Griffin explains the problem with Muslims:
The Wall Street Journal carries a piece by Bret Stephens reporting favourably on developments in the Belgian far-right party Vlaams Belang (formerly the Vlaams Blok, which officially dissolved itself in 2004 after being convicted of inciting racial hatred). Noting that the party has a history of Nazi sympathies and Holocaust denial, Stephens adds:
“Once again, British people are being inconvenienced by the activities of home grown Muslim terrorists who, it appears, have conspired to plant bombs on passenger planes leaving the UK…. The British National Party Executive’s solution to this problem is to ban immediately, ALL MUSLIMS from flying out of (and in to) Britain until the security situation has been fully resolved.”