Why Islamization does not come under natural law, and how the “Austrian approach” can safeguard religious peace.
Translated by John Melville Harris
You can download a PDF version of this chapter by following this link.
Section 1
Opinion diktat, muteness and cultural self-abnegation in the face of Islam
Islam is not to be discussed, for such is invariably associated with the risk of “insulting” Islam and Muslims.
Questions are not to be posed about the nature of Islam, for the deposit of faith and the “doctrine” are the “internal affairs” of Islamic religious societies. To be especially eschewed, are questions and remarks which might infer a lack of “respect” toward Islam or Muslims, for respect is considered a central category of multicultural social cohesion.
Muslims art not be treated differently from indigenous citizens, for “anti-discrimination legislation” expressly prohibits unequal treatment even though people are unequal and behave very much unequally. Headscarves, billowing garments—raven-black or brightly colored as in 1001 Nights—beards, kaftans and crakows are by no means to be adduced as grounds for “discrimination” in the allocation of positions in the workplace, because equal treatment of the unequal is a European dogma.
The strategic self-separation of Muslims through numerous ritualistic, special provisions (prayer rites, ablutions, dietary regulations, fasting, etc.) leads perforce to the desynchronization of daily life, hence to a constitutional disparity between Muslims and members of the host societies. That this leads to increasing social segregation is embellished with the attainment of “cultural diversity”, and this likewise is a dogma of the European Union which is beyond any criticism.
How this separation is expected to harmonize with the professed political guiding principle of the “integration” of newcomers is nowhere taken up for detailed discussion. Presumably it suffices to claim that Islam is an “enrichment” for the senile European culture. It therefore deserves “admiration” and must be defended against any rejection.
Non-Muslims are absolutely forbidden to research Islam and to teach or lecture on it, for only Muslims trained as imams have the right to impart Islam. hey alone are entitled to the sovereignty of interpretation over what concerns Islam. In general, Arabic is claimed as the language of revelation. The Koran is said not to be translatable into another language without loss of meaning or danger of distortion; at best, it can be re-narrated. Whoever has not mastered the Arabic language of the Koran is forbidden from the outset to make (critical) statements about Islam.
Dialogue, however, is an obligation, since inter-religious dialogue is a correlate of the multi-religious society: – we must continually “be in conversation”! However, the dialogue must be limited to the ever recurrent establishment of points by which all religions are said to be the same; in particular, that we all worship “the same God”. A discussion which gives expression to the divergent concepts of different religions and their possible incompatibilities with Islam vis-à-vis the constitutional state is deemed unacceptable and under no circumstances is it to be characterized as “dialogue”.
Even though we have no right to research Islam, to ask critical questions about it, or to reject certain elements of Islamic doctrine as culturally foreign or threatening, despite not really knowing anything about Islam or not being permitted know anything, we must nevertheless grant the followers of Islam unrestricted freedom to practice their cult, for there exists, after all, the “fundamental right to freedom of religion”. Without knowing content-wise to what end Islam and its followers are being given “freedom”, the countries of the West are at the same time relinquishing every residue of preference for the tenets of their own religious background; for after all, there exists an obligation to the “religious neutrality of law and justice”.
In any event, refusal to accept the claims of Islam and its institutional representatives is considered an expression of “Islamophobia”. Depending on the way they are deployed, these claims range from demands that Islam be “respected” and recognized for its peaceable quality and enriching effect, through demands for an Islam-compatible food supply in public institutions like schools and hospitals, up to requiring that daily rhythms be adjusted to those of the Islamic cult system, including the elimination of Christian symbols from the public sphere.
To reject these claims, which are manifestly components of a strategy for transforming the ensemble of epochal cultural conditions of daily life [Alltagskultur] is considered “Islamophobic”; that is, it is considered a symptom of a state of mind to be found somewhere between mental illness and a criminal disposition.
There are those who prove that certain verses from the Koran and the hadith place narrow limits to the project of a “liberal renewal”; they reference the dogmatic calls for the killing of unbelievers, the prescribed enmity toward Christians and Jews, the inferior position of women, the instruction to conduct raids and the imperative to collect tribute from non-Muslims, the standardization of corporal punishment, the mandatory provision for retributive justice or blood vengeance as well as the ritualization of all daily life down to the last detail. Whoever provides such documentation is reflexively delegitimized with the claim that he is “wresting quotations from their context”.
And should the Koran-faithful Irhabis (literally, “terrorists”) act according to instructions and take implacable measures in order to “strike terror into the hearts of unbelievers”, the professional “Islam understanders” in the Western mass media are the first, aside from the professional functionaries of the Islamic institutions, to protest that violence and murderous terror have nothing to do with the “true Islam”, hence “nothing to do with anything”.
Whoever is skeptical in the face of such guidelines is reassured by the prospect of Islam’s putative “reformability”. After all, Islam, until today, has had a much shorter period of development available to it than, for example, Christianity, and therefore ought not to be judged too harshly. A phase of “enlightenment”, hence an unfolding of “liberal Islam”—also fondly identified with the trademark of “Euro-Islam”—is impending, especially if Islam is not brought into contempt with “stereotypes”, thereby hindering the unfolding of its peaceful potential.
Given the foregoing, the elites of the Western countries are eagerly at pains to lessen the burden of jihad for potential actors of a violent precursor to Islamization, in that they knock the intellectual weapons used to fight the radical antithesis of this Western cultural order from the hands of those who are prepared to fight for its centuries long, organically grown custom- and tradition- based ethic for daily living [Alltagsethik].
Freedom of opinion [Meinungsfreiheit] is the key resource for the defense of a society which rests on voluntary cooperation, the economic success of the many and on the spiritual pre-eminence of the individual. For such a society builds on the culture of civil non-violence and can therefore not be defended by physical aggression, but only by unconditional freedom of speech [Freiheit des Wortes]. Freedom of opinion is the right to say what is right, but also to say what is false. For only competition among opinions decides what “truth” is in a secular constitutional state.
The use of a criminal code for opinion offenses [Meinungsstrafrecht] is the ultima ratio for the termination of freedom of opinion. Criminal laws governing opinion when selectively applied have a particularly disastrous effect in the battle for truth. This currently pertains to all Western countries in the field of conflict between the fundamental rights to freedom of opinion and freedom of religion, in that the two norms are being applied asymmetrically, so that Islam and its unlimited practice are continually protected and defended against criticism; Christianity, by contrast, is exposed to contempt.
In Austria, the criminal law governing opinions is standardized by what constitutes offenses under the “Disparagement of Religious Doctrines” [Herabwürdigung religiöser Lehren] and “Incitement to Hatred” [Verhetzung], criminal codes § 188 and § 283 respectively. While attacks on Christianity over the past three decades have not led to a single conviction (no Christian church has ever found fault with this), complaints are not only regularly brought against criticism of Islam, or even against the mere naming of objectively demonstrable Islamic faith contents, but punishment is also imposed.
Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, to whom this essay is dedicated with the admiration of the author for her commitment and work, was convicted because she thematized Mohammed’s sexual consummation with the nine-year-old Aisha, which is very well documented in the hadith literature, and emphasized the normative significance of Mohammed’s actions as a model for all Muslims. Many other Islam critics have followed her as victims of the justice system.
But the carrying-on of the politicized justice system in critical areas is not the endpoint of the development. The redefinition of any unwelcome expression of aversion as a “hate crime” opens the door once and for all to official and judicial despotism. Regardless of the basis of action, every form of aversion is to become the object of criminal prosecution, although it is impossible by legal means to distinguish hatred from mere displeasure.
And unlike what constitutes “Incitement to Hatred”, the asymmetrical effect favoring Islam is not merely a question of selective application by the judicial system, but one of the legal conception itself: in the description of what constitutes an offense, the protection against “hatred” already applies only to minorities, their religion and culture, migrants or immigrants as well as to those subject to “racist” persecution, but never to the indigenous majority and their culture or their national heritage. This way, and not otherwise, is how the OSCE1 will have it. They have been advancing this project for many years. So too will the relevant European organizations have it this way, such as the EU Fundamental Rights Agency and the ECRI;2 and likewise those European states, which have already singularly distinguished themselves on this question, pursue and conceive of the matter in the same way. Deserving special mention in this connection is Germany with its “Netzdurchsuchungsgesetz” [Network Enforcement Act], a law of spying and denunciation. As well, there is France, which is currently (summer 2019) on the point of finalizing a similar legislative proposal.
Overall, Germany is definitely the one country, which has not only already carried out the unlimited welcoming culture for seekers after full-maintenance who are arriving from all over the world, but she has also gone the furthest in hurrying along the dismantling of the remnant of democratic-constitutional structures. The totalitarian intent of the political elites, and the downright fascist quality of the particular metapolitical climate which they control, can be appreciated by referencing the manifest drawing-room social acceptability of recent statements by individual senior-level representatives of the system, and which have stood without any consequences whatsoever.
For example, the secretary general of the largest German governing party (CDU),3 Peter Tauber, announced the following on 19 June 2019: one must now think of ways to deny certain fundamental rights to “right wing extremists” (which would include, for example, people, who in connection with mass immigration, speak of “losing control of the country”). Taking the matter somewhat further is the demand of the Bavarian politician, Tobias Himpenmacher (die Linke Partei),4 who considers a “central lodging for integration-reluctant neo-Nazis” to be necessary; that is, the erection of concentration camps, so that those who wish to live together “in freedom and tolerance” will no longer be disturbed (Donauwörther Zeitung, 7 July 2019).
It can reasonably be assumed that this is by no means the end point of the development, for as Clausewitz says: “War drives to the ultimate extreme.”
The commitment to freedom of opinion is no orchid discipline from the field of constitutional law; it is not the hobby of old, idiosyncratic pedants who are unable to accept that freedom of consumption, sexual intercourse and supranational capital transactions do not entirely define the characteristics of the liberal constitutional state. Freedom of opinion is entirely coextensive with the foundation of liberal democracy as such. If the idea of “governance by the people” is ever to have any kind of meaning and any kind of real underpinning, the decision-making processes of the people—whether it be elections or issue-related plebiscites—must follow from the guaranteed prerequisites for all rational problem-solving mechanisms.
The prerequisites for all rational decision-making are: identificationand naming of the problem, the disclosure of the proposed variants of solutions to problems, the evaluation of the effects or consequences of implementing any problem-solving proposal, the (subjective) assessment of the effects or consequences in each case; and finally, the possibility of making a conscious decision on one of the proposed problem-solving mechanisms.
In (real) democracy, participation and majority voting are indispensable at each decision-making stage. And the instrument that makes both participation and the majority vote possible is freedom of opinion. This is central to the entire mechanism of democracy, and not just at the stages of assessment and decision, which describe so to speak the subjective component of the decision-making process.
Rather, freedom of speech is also crucial for mastery of the objective components of the above mentioned (democratic) decision-making process; specifically, for identifying and naming problems and for assessing the possible solutions and their consequences. In democracy, nothing is “true”, nothing is “objectively correct”, which has not been exposed to the chalybeate bath of the competition of divergent opinions. And in order for its function to be capable of fulfilment, competing opinions must not be exposed to any restrictions, or at least to only extremely mild ones. If we should have learned anything from Sir Karl Popper, then this!
In recent years, the social and political reality of Western countries has been deriding this fundamental understanding mercilessly. As early as the first stage of the above mentioned decision-making process, it has completely destroyed freedom of opinion and its organically associated freedom of speech. It is in every way factually demonstrable and objectively provable that:
- The mass influx of people from the Third World has substantially changed the demographic fabric of European and American societies; that mass migration is in part favored and reinforced by specific decision-makers or “influencers”.
- In virtually all Western states, the Muslim share of the population has grown, in some cases drastically in recent decades.
- The daily cultural, customs and traditions and character of the urban districts dominated by Muslim communities have changed drastically.
- In the wake of these kinds of processes, a substantial deterioration among the affected indigenous population has occurred, whether it concerns security, the degree of self-determination or the modalities of everyday dealings with one another.
But in the countries of the West it is increasingly impossible, meaning it is frowned upon, or actually even forbidden to characterize these processes as “population exchange”, “planned migration”, “Islamization” and “loss of control over the country”.
Persons or associations who use the above mentioned expressions to describe the changes highlighted here are not just scorned and loathed as “right-wing populists”, “right-wing extremists”, “racists” or “Nazis”; more than that, in many countries, they are politically and socially marginalized; they are registered, observed, monitored and prosecuted by secret services and constitutional protection agencies; and in any event, excluded from political decision-making.
As for an assessment and evaluation of different possibilities for dealing politically with the above mentioned changes or the problems arising from them, it never even begins to reach that point. It follows that there can be no talk at all of the peoples’ participation in the fundamental decisions which bear upon the above-mentioned changes and the ways of dealing with them. Is there a single country in the world, in which the people throughout the decades decided or co-decided on mass immigration and the acceptance of ongoing Islamic influence on everyday life?
The abolition of freedom of opinion is therefore equivalent to the transformation of democracy into a totalitarian dictatorship. That this is not being carried out by people with peaked caps and jackboots and on the basis of a hierarchically enforced central plan, but rather through the systemic co-operation of diverse agencies based on the decentralized deployment of an extensive set of potent instruments and with reference to the all-encompassing multicultural ideology, does not matter.
But it is precisely this systemic [systemische] quality of contemporary totalitarianism that should be the focus of objective analysis. The system-analytical approach must also remain in the forefront in understanding the essential characteristics of the various societal structures in which human coexistence has been brought about over the last centuries and millennia, and which finally in recent decades have fallen victim to an asymmetrical ideological warfare.
Every organism possesses an immune system that enables it to survive even under more adverse conditions. That is also valid for social systems which strive to defend their identity and functional effectiveness against external attacks and internal disturbances. This ability is always based on three requisite competences: (1) to identify, apprehend and verbally name the attacks or disturbances; (2) to understand and analyze—in their real, material presence [Wesenheit]— the method of operation of the attacks and their effects; (3) to combat the attacks and disturbances in a system-compliant way; that is, to solve the problems associated with them without in the process harming or endangering the inner constitutional structure [Verfasstheit] and construction principles of the system itself.
The first, or immediately preceding section of this essay corresponds to the first of the three named competences and seeks to describe the loss of ability to apprehend and name the problem: the anxiety about “insult”, “discrimination”, “prejudices” and “stereotypes”; the anathema of “Islamophobia” and “impiety”; the fetish of “diversity”; “multi-colored tolerance” [Buntheit] and “multicultural coexistence”; the imposition of “dialogue”; the acceptance of the Muslim sovereignty of the interpretation over Islam and the non-disclosure of dogmas of faith as “internal affairs”; the whitewash of “nothing has anything do with anything”; and finally, the tabooing of the Islamization process under the banner of securing the “fundamental right to freedom of religion” have led to muteness, liquidation of freedom of opinion, incapacity for truth and to the complete paralysis of the powers of self-defense.
The second of the three above-named competencies of social systems, protection against attacks, requires the ability to apprehend and understand the method of operation of external attacks. This, in turn, presupposes an understanding of both the functional principles of one’s own social system as well as the specific nature of the aggressor and his repertoire of action. It would be reasonable for a second section of this essay to tackle precisely this analytical task.
However, theoretical presuppositions for such a step in the work are extensive and would far exceed the scope of this small essay. Also they have yet to be undertaken in an adequate way elsewhere in the relevant literature, since the positivism dominating the social sciences today is standing in the way of an adequate treatment. For that reason, only two points can be made here in a few lines —apart from that, those interested are directed to works of the author that are now being prepared for publication.
First, reference should be made to the necessary cultural history of human communities in conjunction with a theory of the significance of religion for countries and societies; and secondly, the nature of Islam, or the nature of a societal order based on Islam should be developed and contrasted with a Christian enculturated social order. The following points are only hypotheses at this point, but they offer an idea of the direction “the journey” of an elaborated presentation of this analysis must take:
- All social formations are the product of an enculturation of religious concepts.
- Each social formation is part of a cultural framework which for its part stands in systematic interaction with the respective ruling religious form.
- A cultural framework and the social formation embedded in it define a stage of civilization. This stamps, completely, the underlying mentality [Wesen] of the human mind [Geistes].
- Civilizational stages are separated from one another by cultural thresholds. The cultural framework of a given stage of civilization, as a rule, incorporates into itself the knowledge [Wissen] of the previous stage.
- Religions are quasi-organic systems; that is to say, they are wholes [Ganzheiten], whose subsystems cannot be changed arbitrarily, deformed or substituted for each other.
- Islam enculturates a social order which differs systemically from any which Christianity has brought about. The former is structurally incompatible with the latter.
- The exercise of the Islamic religion reproduces its order. It can therefore be tolerated in a society informed by Christianity only under restricted conditions.
The third above-mentioned competence, the ability to fight against disturbances within one’s own culture-system and combat attacks on it in a system-conforming way, corresponds to the following, second section of this essay. It should be kept in mind while reading it, that the political and legal measures suggested there form only one important element of a strategy which is as much a comprehensive as it is an efficient, yet nevertheless peaceful and constitutional way of dealing with the problem of Islamization.
If a final preliminary remark regarding the following section might still be permitted, the means and methods that should be brought to bear to defend against Islamization must not jeopardize the essential features of the system itself or destroy the guiding principles of its blueprint. That means that the defense of, and the quest to preserve a constitutional state and social order based on individual freedom and the moral order of the West against the totalitarianism of an Islamic social order must not be achieved by means outside of the constitutional and Christian moral traditions.
The late Austro-Hungarian Habsburg monarchy created a framework of this kind with the development of the concept of the “state-church law” [Staatskirchenrecht], whereby the first “Islamic law” in the world was brought about. This “Austrian approach” has been developed further. The chance of providing long-lasting religious peace with it has up to now been squandered by the forces of cultural socialism and still awaits political implementation.
Section 2
Islam as socio-cultural threat to the West and the answer of the “Austrian School of Islamology”
The Islamization of the West and the policy of the elites
In the face of the enormous dislocations which have arisen for Western societies in recent decades owing to the increasing impact of Islam on social reality, there have been over a period of time more or less meaningful discussions about the political management of this phenomenon. Considering what the present analysis has sought to show, the invariably suggestive question posed, as to whether or not Islam “belongs” to this or that particular Western country, must be regarded as an exceptional absurdity. Particularly following the experiences with the mass migration of persons who since 2015 have been emigrating “on Allah’s path”, the opinion is now established in the destination lands for “refuge-and asylum-seekers” that Islamization has rather nothing to do with “cultural enrichment”.
The question of an adequate reaction to the existing pressure of Islamization and its consequences has meanwhile, therefore, already reached into the daily politics of practically all Western countries. In response to this, an abstract concept, which is to say, a political concept has been established, which many decision makers have eagerly taken up: that of “political Islam”. Within a few years, this idea has found its place in analytical debate as well as in everyday politics.
Although the concept is quite widespread, which is to say it counts as established, it is also not agreed among its adepts, or at least they are not clear among themselves whether the concept has to do with a classification instrument for “different types of Islam” or whether it is a tactical political maneuver, a mere verbal cipher.
The fact is, however, there is a distinction to be made among different “versions” of Islam, which, with the aid of various adjectives, is quite popular whenever one ought not to criticize Islam as such, or is unwilling to do so. “Political Islam” is then equated with “radical Islam”, which is categorically differentiated from “moderate Islam”: the latter is considered “good” and compatible with the order of the West, the former is evil and culturally incompatible with it.
This view slides easily, and hence very frequently in practice over into the model of thinking which holds that “political Islam” is a misuse of “religious Islam” by political power brokers acting in their own interests. Accordingly, “Islam” itself thereby becomes the victim of extra-religious machinations. “Political Islam” is then the projection screen for all evil, which must be combated in its own right in order to protect Islam itself. Why something which is in itself good only becomes “bad” by virtue of being pursued “politically” can, however, not yet be explained.
In any event, the truth is, there are various forms and degrees by which Muslims or Islamic communities exercise their religion. As supposedly obvious evidence, there is the penchant for pointing to the intensity, penetration, totality or universality with which Islam has been practiced historically or would have a cultural impact in diverse geographical regions. Also in this connection, one likes to refer to the many denominations, law schools and dynastic modalities of implementation. But of course, as with every other religion, this argument must result in there being as many different “Islams” as there are practicing Muslims. The idea, as one can see here, falls hopelessly short in the failure, in the fundamental inability up to now of all the adherents of the concept of “political Islam”, as well as those of every other adjectivally circumscribed type of Islam, to distinguish, or be capable of distinguishing the substance of this religion, its core domain, from its accidental admixtures.
The very deserving Bill Warner, apart from his journalistic activity of combining the academic with the popular, makes the definitional standard for a “political Islam” the criterion of whether a given Islamic (Koranic) content concerns itself with the treatment of “infidels” or not. Others, such as the Islam-critic, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, take into account the activity of political or proto-political institutions like the Muslim Brotherhood, upon whose – partly violent – agitation hangs the proof of “political Islam” or its distinguishability from its completely harmless little brother. And the governments of some countries and many of their respective political parties and advisers have been working for a considerable time on a “law against political Islam”, pursuant to which violent machinations “in the name of Allah” might be prevented and the disquieted political public calmed.
However, the facets of admittance to the idea of “political Islam” are as multifarious as the concept itself is irredeemable, meaningless and counterproductive. It is hopeless to attribute all the unwanted, conflict-ridden characteristics of Islam to a political homunculus in order thereby to rescue the “true Islam” as an awe-inspiring religious form. The construction of a “political Islam” is quasi the conceptual brother of the visionary wish for a “Euro-Islam” or a “liberal Islam”. The latter rests upon the same methodological operation and hence on the same conceptual fallacies, as a result of which one imagines he can in any desired manner choose, assemble and combine the components of Islam with Islam-alien elements, thereby achieving reconciliation with modernity.
The Phantasm of “Political Islam” and its destructive consequences
The phantasm of “political Islam” vanishes definitively and irrevocably into thin air when one researches the possible relational field between “Islam” and “politics” at an essential, more basic level. An in-depth consideration of the sequence of steps to the secular order shows that politics is the product of a relatively late phase in the modern development of culture. Politics is not simply some form, or even any form of societal interaction that aims at power or governance. It is the product of the complementarity among those great institutions or cultural components which underwent their formation only within the European and American sphere of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the ruling principle and essence of Islam dates from a stage in the socio-cultural development of humanity lying several thousand years in the past (not just 1,400 years), a period into which the Islamic cultural order is ultimately pressing to return again. Everything in Islam is religion, everything is communal order, everything is culture and everything represents the totality of Islam in its access to all spheres of human life.
All imperatives, interdicts, and paradigmatic representations of the Islamic revelation, the way of life of the Prophet Muhammad as exemplar, and the quasi-historical events of the alleged period of emergence of Islam as we know them from the Koran, hadith, and biographies of the Prophet; all of these attest to the following all too clearly: what is “political” about the law of retribution, about polygamy, about the despotic capriciousness of Allah, about the rites and purification prescriptions, about the headscarf and the different versions of jihad?
Islam is true reality, not because it is “political”, but because it is a comprehensive and universal pattern for the socio-cultural coexistence of human beings.
“Political Islam”, by contrast, is the product of analytical desperation and an alibi-like, political populism.
Nevertheless, the question remains as to how one can explain the actual variability of Islamic communal formations, the broad spectrum in the application of Islamic imperatives, the enforcement of Islamic cultural patterns as well as the radicality of their protagonists if not by the existence of different “versions” of Islam. The answer can be given in the present paper with only a hint as to the directional thrust of continuing work. In Austria, a research paradigm has been established over the course of the past decade which calls itself the “Austrian School of Islamology”. It inclines toward the methods of the “Austrian School of Economics”, the insights of the sociology of religion as well as the fruits of thought from the field of cultural philosophy.
The notion that there are numerous “versions” of Islam manifesting themselves in denominations, law schools, dynasties and local and regional expressions among others — “there is no such thing as the Islam…” — rests on an intellectual fallacy of empirical reductionism. This error looks only at snapshots of various cultural constellations and persists in the consideration of static, situational patterns.
The methodological approach of the “Austrian School of Islamology”
In contrast, the “Austrian School” understands Islam as a living organism, as an internally consistent whole—as system—which continually tends towards homeostatic equilibrium whilst carrying out adaptive motions, adopting thereby morphologically diverse forms and traits. Everything whose “genetic code” consists in the holistic composite of Koran, hadith and the biographies of the Prophet must be understood as Islam. Islam’s entire repertoire of conditions, its developmental stages and the variants thereof are rooted in this “genetic code”.
To this repertoire of conditions belongs a corresponding repertoire of actions, which arise from the Koranic doctrinal imperative, the archetypical formation of Allah’s characterological representation as well as the exemplar-effect of the Prophet’s mode of behavior. The individual elements of the Koranic doctrine of action have different grades of validity under different external conditions, because they rest on specifically formulated and contextualized imperatives which take into account the respective situational contingencies.
The ritual component and the symbolic world of Islam have similar relation-induced effects. Taken in their synthesis, these elements provide the Islamic organism with a high level of functional application and plasticity.
This is indispensable for the survivability of Islam under changing economic, demographic, technical and geopolitical conditions; for owing to the complete absence of a productive economic ethic, Islam is dependent on the consumption of foreign, extra-Islamic real and cultural capital, which exposes it to the danger of cultural and ideological “impurity”. Therefore, the Koranic principle of “razzia”, acquisition of tribute and capital consumption” must of necessity correspond to the cyclical sequences of the spread of religious radicalization, combined with the retarding effect of the consolidation or enrooting of the deposit of faith on the one hand, and religious “tolerance” and “readiness to compromise” on the other hand. The ever-recurring violent conflicts between different denominations and other game variants of Islam are also to be understood as part of this cyclical process.
The organic holism of Islam cannot be grasped with a momentary inspection. Those who abandon themselves to the illusion of point-in-time referenced comparisons of the configuration of diverse Islamic communities in disparate territories must perforce embrace the idea of different “versions of Islam,” which amounts to different concepts of Islam. Snapshots of situational patterns can at best say something about the “real Islam” on a specific date. Whoever, on the other hand, wishes to research Islam in its wholeness, must study the pattern of its process-structure in its timeline if he is to understand the laws of the one and unique Islam-organism. This is definitely also a precondition for the ability to deal proactively and adequately with the dangers and consequences of Islamization from the perspective of a destination country of Muslim migration or from the standpoint of a host country with a growing Islamic population.
The content of the final section of this small work is also linked to the approach of the “Austrian School of Islamology”. This explores the question of how the secular state enculturated in Christian monotheism should deal with Islam and Muslims.
The failure of policy
In recent decades, the overwhelming majority of Western states have seen a massive increase in the Muslim share of the population. Initially, after the Second World War, it was barely noticeable; from the 1960s, it was insidious, yet noticeable owing to the labor migration; then it took a sudden leap by virtue of decisive, massive geopolitical events like the “Bosnian War” and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s; finally, it increased explosively in consequence of the mass migration and asylum crisis as of 2015. Over top of this demographic interfacing, progressive Islamization followed by and large rampantly; that is, Islam had an increasing effect on the customs and traditions of the everyday culture; and Islamic communities became increasingly important in the politics of the affected countries.
That means that the political sector possesses no well-ordered strategy for dealing with this phenomenon, and there is even less of a specific juridical infrastructure for how the Islamic religion is implemented. The latter is carried out exclusively on the basis of general freedom of religion in the respective countries and with reference to the relevant international standards of general human rights. Specific problems arising from individual followers of Islam who have attracted attention, or with particular radically acting Islamic institutions, are dealt with at best on the basis of general criminal or administrative law. With that, the problem appears to be settled for most political decision makers. Attitudes of resignation among critics, or even their capitulation, are accordingly widespread in everyday political life.
The Austrian Islam Act
The only country that represents a striking exception on this question – at least theoretically – is Austria. There are two historical reasons for this: first, the specific form of contact with the Bosnian Muslims at the end of the centuries-long (bellicose) confrontations of the Danube Monarchy with the Ottoman Empire; and second, the unique tradition of the Austrian, so-called state-church law [Staatskirchenrecht], which, through the Recognition Act of 1874, formulated the admission requirements for newly constituted faith communities in a very concise way. The first factor owes its effect to the Emperor, Franz Josef, who wished to shape relations with his Bosnian subjects within an economically prospering milieu and a culturally beneficial setting. The second factor rests on the deeply rooted Austrian tradition of thought that a matter is only well regulated if there is a legal substrate for it.
It was these two factors which led to the drafting and adoption of the world’s first “Law on Islam”. And it is almost unbelievable that to this day Austria is the only country in the world where there is a Law on Islam of this kind.
After the final repulse of the Ottoman expansion into the Balkans by the European peacekeeping power of the Austrian-Hungarian Habsburg monarchy, Bosnia-Herzegovina became an Austrian protectorate in the course of the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Only in 1909 was Bosnia admitted to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, when it was formally placed under the administrative control of the Hungarian Ministry of Finance. In 1910, Kaiser Franz Joseph formalized its admission by decreeing a special constitutional status.
The monarchy conferred upon the country a remarkable economic boom, undertook a singular effort to maintain religious peace and endeavored to preserve the societal structures which were in many respects tied to the Muslim elites. As a special sign of equal rights, Islam was accordingly to be granted the status throughout the realm of a legally recognized religious community [Religionsgemeinschaft]. Grounded in a knowledge which was by no means inconsiderable, a parliamentary special commission was instituted specifically for the purpose, and it evaluated the possible consequences of such a recognition. After some three years of work, the Commission finally recommended that legal recognition be implemented. This occurred with the “consent of both houses of the Reichsrat” to the Law on Islam of 15 July 1912.
In its concept as a special law [Sondergesetz], which took into account the individual characteristics of the Muslim community and in many respects granted it special accommodation, this was nevertheless a provisional arrangement which allowed the Muslims lengthy time limits for constituting a formal institution and for the qualifying of their religious officials. Because of the First World War, and owing to the circumstance that in its aftermath Islam for decades no longer had any relevance in the territory of what henceforth became the small state of Austria, the law was never really transformed into a condition of religio-legal normalcy. Since then, many deficiencies and inadequacies in dealing with the “real Islam” have been slipping into Austria. These difficulties, however, with the increasing Islamic presence in the Europe of the 21st century, have been proving ever more pressing.
The initiative for renewal of the Islam Act and the political failures
The exponents of the above-mentioned “Austrian School of Islamology”, who were formed from the circles within the Wiener Akademikerbund [The Association of Vienna Academics] in the first decade of the 21st century, took the opportunity to launch the project for a renewal of the Islam Act and complete the intellectual preparations for it. For present purposes, the basic reflections are taken from the insights summarized in this work as follows:
- Religion is veritable reality. It shapes the cultures, societies and countries in which it is embedded.
- The exercise of religion, through its adherents, reproduces the very order which came into being through the cultural stamp of that same religion.
- Christian monotheism and Islam enculturate completely different social and political orders which are incompatible and cannot be combined with each other in essential points.
- An order condensed from Christianity can therefore not accept, as “equally entitled options”, the societal building blocks of a societal or political order arising from Islam.
- The dogma of the “religious neutrality of the state” is therefore a contradiction in terms and is incompatible with the legitimacy which every polity has in defending itself against enforced change.
- Although tied to certain risks, the order of the secular constitutional state must accept the freedom of individual religious practice, even in the case of foreign cults (to be understood only within the framework of general laws), if it is not to fall into self contradiction.
- The constitutional state can and must, however, regulate or restrict in a specific way collective/corporate implementation of religious practices whenever these arise mandatorily out of the constitutive characteristics of a religion.
This set of principles leads almost of necessity to a solution approaching a specific form of Islam Act. The Austrian law governing religion is for that reason designed as a “State-Church Act”, for it is obligated to the conviction that a well-ordered form of corporate enforcement in the area of religion in a secular constitutional state is only possible if the state stands vis-à-vis a legal personality bearing the responsibility for religious practice and its possible consequences.
This affects Christianity automatically, because it exists by definition as a Church (or churches). Owing to its historical genesis and its history of revelation, Islam has no knowledge inherent to itself out of which institutions of this kind can arise. If there is a will to grant corporate religious freedom to Islam, this must be brought about, uno actu, by the constitution of a legal personality responsible for the community. For only within the symmetry of freedom and responsibility can religious peace be preserved within a national community.
The Islam Act follows this ruling principle by virtue of it being, in essence, a law governing the recognition of a religious society and the conditions constituting it. This approach was already extant in the Islam Act of 1912, but was not sufficiently implemented, so that a constitutionally satisfactory foundation for enforcement of the law did not exist, and over the course of the decades this situation ran completely out of control. The result of this deficit was the spread of an uncontrolled growth of Islamic institutions, activities and events which changed the day-to-day cultural customs and traditions, all resulting from decades-long seepage processes [Sickerprozessen] which neither the political nor administrative levels were in a position to manage.
In the meantime, in the small country of Austria, around four hundred mosque facilities have been established, which are instituted on the basis of civil law governing associations, and within which collective, Islamic enforcement of religion is conducted. These mosques have nothing to do formally with the IGGÖ (Islamic Religious Authority of Austria), which was recognized and established by virtue of the Islam Act, operates as the “official representative” of Islam, conducts “inter-religious dialogue”, functions as a contact for politicians and media, enjoys state privileges and claims financial endowments for religious instruction and other activities.
The mosque associations are almost exclusively embedded in the opulent framework of the ethnicities, national backgrounds or tribal connections which are shouldering them, and they also draw financial maintenance from this edifice. In connection with it, among other movements, there is also the widespread influence of the radical institutions such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Turkish Milli Görüs as well as Salafist networks. Through them in particular, even recruitment for IS terrorism has been carried out.
All of this was already sufficient justification in its own right for demanding a renewal of legislation on Islam in Austria. But only the pressure of the accelerating migration flow during the period of 2014 and 2015 and the resulting change in “public opinion” tipped the balance in favour of tackling this project in the sphere of real politics. To this purpose, representatives of the “Austrian School of Islamology” have raised the already longstanding demands for reform and have specified concrete proposals. This, of course, mobilized as expected the indignation of professional Islamic activist communities – “enjoy your last days of freedom!”.
And out of the usual mixture of culpable ignorance, opportunism, political patronage and lack of principles, the Austrian political sector passed the “Law on Islam 2015”, which has completely failed in its purpose. Despite intense discussions and warnings of a factual nature being given within the pre-parliamentary as well as the parliamentary sphere, a legal text was railroaded through; and although nominally containing portions of the experts’ demands, it was nevertheless legally (deliberately?) so inadequately laid out, or there were such obvious, predeterminable weak points, that an implementation according to the sense of its objectives is impossible.
In effect, the “new Law on Islam” has even exacerbated the mechanism for the rampant spread of Islamic communities, the absence of enforceable responsibility as well as the influence of radical, often foreign forces. As an example, one need only make reference here to the fully official and formally implemented legislative act, pursuant to which the ethnic-Bosnian associations have been subordinated to the decision-making power of the Grand Mufti of Sarajevo, who in turn is solidly under Saudi Arabian influence.
The wretched appearance of four members of the government’s turquoise-blue coalition (ÖVP/FPÖ)1 at a press conference on 8 June 2018 must be rated an exceptional blunder. They wholeheartedly announced the dissolution of mosque associations and the deportation of foreign imams. After a few months, they were forced to recognize that all measures foundered on the inadequate principles for implementation of the Islam Act – exactly as the critics had already predicted on the day of the press conference.
Indispensable measures for cultural self-defense in all countries of the West
It therefore remains the task henceforth to continue the implementation of the proposals of the “Austrian School of Islamology”, in Austria and in all other countries, who wish to take seriously the battle against a rampant Islamization and the resulting total transformation of their inherent cultural substance. Among the set of proposed measures, the most important for implementation are the following:
- That there be disclosure of the basic tenets of faith in the interests of enforcing the right of the general public to be informed about the teaching contents, views and goals of all religious communities. Such disclosure is the precondition for a serious test of compatibility with state law and would also be necessary for securing any kind of meaningful inter-religious dialogue or dialogue between the state and religious societies.
- That the collective enforcement of the religious practice of Muslims be restricted to religious societies recognized by the state, and that this be tied to the requirement for the dissolution of associations where the Islamic religious life escapes any kind of transparency vis-à-vis the public and deprives the competent state authorities of any access.
- That the foreign financing of operations involving religion be prohibited pursuant to the postulate that each Austrian religious society has independent viability (i.S. § 6 of the Recognition Act or perhaps § 2 of the Orthodox Act), with the objective, as well, of minimising the radicalising influence of foreign states and organisations not operating in accordance with human rights.
The political and legal way of dealing with Islam up to now has been marked by the illusion that Islam is “a religion like any other” and therefore the “state-church law”, which developed in connection with the Christian churches and denominations, can be applied more or less automatically and unchanged to the laying of a legal framework for the state to use in dealing with Islam. This illusion has proved to be a mistake, for the religio-legal and political relationship of the state to Islam have up to now been relying on quasi-ecclesiastical characteristics of Islam which it does not exhibit, but would have to possess in order to communicate in a legally binding way with authorities and civil society, without special constructs and formalisms, and in order to be capable of assuming responsibility for the actions of its adherents.
Political policy makers are being called upon to quickly and determinedly come to grips with the implementation of a project that ensures religious peace. For the momentum of the consequences of the influx of Muslim migrants, and the consistent wish of radical Islamic states and organizations to use as many of them as possible to man outposts for their religious and power-political interests, admits of no further delay.
1 The Österreichische Volkspartei (Austrian People’s Party) and the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (Austrian Freedom Party)
2 Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
3 European Commission for Racism and Intolerance: the Council of Europe’s independent human rights monitoring body specialised in combating anti-Semitism, discrimination, racism, religious intolerance and Xenophobia.
4 Christlich-Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Union)
5 The Left Party