The Austrian government on Friday said it would expel several foreign-funded imams and shut down seven mosques in a crackdown In what it described as ‘political Islam’.
Austrian Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz said the move is coming after an investigation by the religious affairs authority into images which emerged in April of children in Turkish-backed mosques playing dead and re-enacting World War I Battle of Gallipoli.
The mosques in question were run by the Turkish-Islamic Cultural Associations (ATIB) , based in the German city of Cologne, and a branch of Turkey’s religious affairs agency, Diyanet.
The photos, published by the Falter Weekly, showed the young boys in camouflage uniforms marching, saluting, waving Turkish flags and then playing dead after which their “corpses” were then lined up and draped in the flags.
“Parallel societies, political Islam and radicalization have no place in our country,” Kurz said.
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