Austria bans foreign donations for Mosques, requires Imams to speak German

[Jayjay]

From 2010

he Norwegian foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, will not allow Saudi Arabia to finance or build any mosques in Norway because of the laws in Saudi Arabia that deny basic religious freedoms. This also includes money from Saudi citizens. - See more at: http://pamelageller.com/2010/10/for...-mosques-in-norway.html/#sthash.vNo64iJ5.dpuf

What is the point of your posting this? To show that other European countries have enacted anti-democratic policies rooted in xenophobia?

What's anti-democratic and xenophobic about opposing the lack of democracy and religious freedoms in Saudi Arabia? Norway's record is spotless compared to KSA.

 

[Warpoet]

What's anti-democratic and xenophobic about opposing the lack of democracy and religious freedoms in Saudi Arabia? Norway's record is spotless compared to KSA.

Singling out Saudi Arabia, out of all the countries in the world with abysmal human rights records, and discriminating against Saudi citizens on the basis of their government's failures, is anti-democratic and xenophobic.

 

[laughing dog]

What's anti-democratic and xenophobic about opposing the lack of democracy and religious freedoms in Saudi Arabia? Norway's record is spotless compared to KSA.

Singling out Saudi Arabia, out of all the countries in the world with abysmal human rights records, and discriminating against Saudi citizens on the basis of their government's failures, is anti-democratic and xenophobic.

You have not made your case very well. It cannot be anti-democratic to discriminate against Saudis in Saudi Arabia because they have no expectations or rights to participate in the governance of Norway. As for xenophobia, the fact Saudi Arabia is singled out strongly suggests that action is not xenophobic (hatred or fear of foreigners).

 

[Jayjay]

What's anti-democratic and xenophobic about opposing the lack of democracy and religious freedoms in Saudi Arabia? Norway's record is spotless compared to KSA.

Singling out Saudi Arabia, out of all the countries in the world with abysmal human rights records, and discriminating against Saudi citizens on the basis of their government's failures, is anti-democratic and xenophobic.

As far as I can tell, it's not singling out Saudi Arabia... it's just that other countries with similar records don't usually have tens of millions to throw to frivolous projects abroad. What makes you think that the ministry would approve of similar request from any other country with a poor human rights record, or any other country at all? The translated article mentions that usually such requests are almost always denied, and in this case the minister just took an opportunity to use it as a platform to speak out against the situation in Saudi Arabia.

As for discriminating against Saudi citiens, my heart bleeds for the mulltimilionaire oil sheiks who's rights have thus been trampled.

 

[Derec]

I always suspected you didn't believe in equality before the law. Now you've made it explicit.

I was just giving background on the decision. It's not like European countries didn't go after certain problematic religions before - I remember Germany going after Scientology for example. The question is what equality before the law entails. Are all religions to be treated exactly the same? Or should how those religions behave be taken into account? Europe tends to take the latter approach, for good or bad.

You also seem to waver on freedom of speech. "Freedom of speech, but not for an Islamist Imam".

You do realize that Austria is not a US state and that their constitution differs from ours right?

Finally, this law is really just a reactionary measure. I'm not aware of any scientific or academic analysis that it will do anything productive to reduce or combat extremism. If anything, it might fuel it further.

We shall see.

This law is just another sign that extremism is alive and well in Europe, and getting worse.

As I have tried to explain, the Austrian government is a grand coalition led by social democrats with the "Europe, foreign and integration" minister belonging to the moderately conservative People's Party. Calling this government a "right wing extremist" one boggles the mind.

From right wing reactionary measures, to right wing extremist parties winning lots of seats, to the growing number of Islamists (who are also conservative extremists), to the large increases in anti-semitism and hate crimes, to the poor economic prospects, to Russian destabilization of Eastern Europe, the future of Europe is looking quite dim at the moment.

Yes Europe has problems but they largely stem from Europe letting in large numbers of Muslims in over the last several decades.

 

[Derec]

Please do not confuse Europe with Austria.

You are confused. It's Australia that's not in part of Europe.

Remember, Austrians were good and willing Nazis as a rule.

Except for Christopher Plummer and Lady Gaga apparently.

And it wasn't that long ago, when  Jörg_Haider was its leader.

Enlighten us. When exactly was Haider the leader of Austria?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Remember most mosque funding is from Saudi Arabia and is of a clear wahhabist flavour. Is this actually quite reasonable? It is funding from another country

I'm not convinced banning foreign funding is the right move. I haven't looked into the pros and cons that much, so I could be persuaded. Regardless, the singling out of Mosques rather than banning foreign funding for all non-profit and religious organizations, if that is the right route to take, is unfortunate and discriminatory.

The thing is the problem is with the mosques. Why ban more than you need to?

 

[laughing dog]

Enlighten us. When exactly was Haider the leader of Austria?

He helped form a coalition government (2002 and 2003) where he played an important leadership role (information that was available in the link).

 

[Warpoet]

You have not made your case very well. It cannot be anti-democratic to discriminate against Saudis in Saudi Arabia because they have no expectations or rights to participate in the governance of Norway. As for xenophobia, the fact Saudi Arabia is singled out strongly suggests that action is not xenophobic (hatred or fear of foreigners).

A policy does not need to directly curtail the rights of citizens to be anti-democratic in principle, nor all foreigners, everywhere, to be xenophobic.

 

[Warpoet]

As far as I can tell, it's not singling out Saudi Arabia... it's just that other countries with similar records don't usually have tens of millions to throw to frivolous projects abroad.

They don't? There are lots countries with horrendous human rights records that finance various projects abroad. India and China spring to mind immediately. Show me a credible source backing up this claim.

What makes you think that the ministry would approve of similar request from any other country with a poor human rights record, or any other country at all? The translated article mentions that usually such requests are almost always denied, and in this case the minister just took an opportunity to use it as a platform to speak out against the situation in Saudi Arabia.

That is not clear from the extremely limited information presented, which is an automated Google translation of a very brief article.

As for discriminating against Saudi citiens, my heart bleeds for the mulltimilionaire oil sheiks who's rights have thus been trampled.

Yeah, thanks for demonstrating exactly the sort of absurdly broad-brush, callously generalized and nonsensical thinking that abounds even in "progressive" communities when we start talking about Muslims and how they ought to be treated under the law.

Bottom line: if Norway typically rejects funding from countries like India and China based on their human rights records, and bans all Indian and Chinese citizens from using their own funds, then maybe this has a leg to stand on. But I'm guessing it doesn't. Feel free to show me something to the contrary.

And the legislation that was quoted by the OP, which goes far beyond what Clive linked to, essentially forcing Austrian Muslims to prove their allegiance to the state and to become sufficiently "German" for the government's liking, is fucking disgraceful and ought to be condemned by every single person on this board. But it isn't. Why is that?

 

[Archimedes]

Austria has Islam as an official religion

wat

 

[Jayjay]

They don't? There are lots countries with horrendous human rights records that finance various projects abroad. India and China spring to mind immediately. Show me a credible source backing up this claim.

We are not talking about "abroad", but Norway in specific, and not just any project, but religious institutions. It's not up to me to prove a negative, but for you to show an example of Norwegian ministry approving any such project. So far, we just have the minister at the time stating that such requests are normally denied and I have no reason to doubt it.

As for Norway discriminating other countries, last year Norwegian finance ministry pulled its national oil fund investments to two Israeli and one Indian firm on ethical grounds.

What makes you think that the ministry would approve of similar request from any other country with a poor human rights record, or any other country at all? The translated article mentions that usually such requests are almost always denied, and in this case the minister just took an opportunity to use it as a platform to speak out against the situation in Saudi Arabia.

That is not clear from the extremely limited information presented, which is an automated Google translation of a very brief article.

Yet you seem to think that this limited information is sufficient to declare Norway's policies as anti-democratic and based on xenophobia.

As for discriminating against Saudi citiens, my heart bleeds for the mulltimilionaire oil sheiks who's rights have thus been trampled.

Yeah, thanks for demonstrating exactly the sort of absurdly broad-brush, callously generalized and nonsensical thinking that abounds even in "progressive" communities when we start talking about Muslims and how they ought to be treated under the law.

In this case, the issue was a millionaire funding a brainwashing institu.. sorry a "mosque" in Norway. I don't give a flying fuck about his rights to finance his wahhabist buddies abroad. This in no way tramples rights of muslims anywhere, not even in Saudi Arabia.

Bottom line: if Norway typically rejects funding from countries like India and China based on their human rights records, and bans all Indian and Chinese citizens from using their own funds, then maybe this has a leg to stand on. But I'm guessing it doesn't. Feel free to show me something to the contrary.

And the legislation that was quoted by the OP, which goes far beyond what Clive linked to, essentially forcing Austrian Muslims to prove their allegiance to the state and to become sufficiently "German" for the government's liking, is fucking disgraceful and ought to be condemned by every single person on this board. But it isn't. Why is that?

The rules only apply to government sanctioned mosques. If they find them too restrictive, they can always opt out.

 

[Jayjay]

Austria has Islam as an official religion

wat

Emphasis on "an".

 

[Warpoet]

We are not talking about "abroad", but Norway in specific, and not just any project, but religious institutions. It's not up to me to prove a negative, but for you to show an example of Norwegian ministry approving any such project. So far, we just have the minister at the time stating that such requests are normally denied and I have no reason to doubt it.

Yeah, that's not what you were just talking about. And it's not up to me to prove anything; I'm still waiting for an explanation as to how any of this is relevant to the OP in the first place.

As for Norway discriminating other countries, last year Norwegian finance ministry pulled its national oil fund investments to two Israeli and one Indian firm on ethical grounds.

I think it is reasonable for a country to broadly limit foreign investment on the basis of human rights records, although banning funding from private citizens is still going too far, and these articles do not speak to that. Regardless, if this is something Norway does consistently and not on the basis of religion, it's still unclear what Clive's point was in bringing this into the discussion.

Yet you seem to think that this limited information is sufficient to declare Norway's policies as anti-democratic and based on xenophobia.

No, I was going by the excerpt Clive posted and asking what the relevance was. I am certainly not obligated to follow a link to a hate site like Pamela Geller's blog, which was his source, to put it in context because he did not.

In this case, the issue was a millionaire funding a brainwashing institu.. sorry a "mosque" in Norway. I don't give a flying fuck about his rights to finance his wahhabist buddies abroad. This in no way tramples rights of muslims anywhere, not even in Saudi Arabia.

Too bad that's not what the quoted content says. It suggests a broad-brush ban on funding from any and all Saudi citizens, which is essentially holding them accountable for the failures of their government, and morally wrong.

And maybe this will come as a shock to you (I doubt it), but not all Saudis, or even all Saudis who might want to put money towards a religious institution overseas, are oil tycoon billionaires with private yachts who chant death to America in their free time.

The rules only apply to government sanctioned mosques. If they find them too restrictive, they can always opt out.

Yes, they can "opt out" and lose their licensing. I'm sure that's a tenable and realistic option for most of them.

But more importantly, you are pussyfooting around the issue, which is that the rules are being applied to Muslims and only Muslims, and are a blatant attempt by the government to force its own identity onto the country's Muslim community - in essence, show them who's the boss.

So, what I just said stands. This is a fucking disgrace, it goes against everything a free society should stand for, and everyone on this forum should be condemning it without hesitation.

But you just can't get yourself to do it, can you?

 

[Jayjay]

Yeah, that's not what you were just talking about. And it's not up to me to prove anything; I'm still waiting for an explanation as to how any of this is relevant to the OP in the first place.

As for Norway discriminating other countries, last year Norwegian finance ministry pulled its national oil fund investments to two Israeli and one Indian firm on ethical grounds.

I think it is reasonable for a country to broadly limit foreign investment on the basis of human rights records, although banning funding from private citizens is still going too far, and these articles do not speak to that. Regardless, if this is something Norway does consistently and not on the basis of religion, it's still unclear what Clive's point was in bringing this into the discussion.

Yet you seem to think that this limited information is sufficient to declare Norway's policies as anti-democratic and based on xenophobia.

No, I was going by the excerpt Clive posted and asking what the relevance was. I am certainly not obligated to follow a link to a hate site like Pamela Geller's blog, which was his source, to put it in context because he did not.

In other words, you assumed the policy was anti-democratic and xenophobic because of the source and didn't bother to check the background. As for relevance, that's for Clive to explain. I was merely commenting on your broad-brushing Norway.

In this case, the issue was a millionaire funding a brainwashing institu.. sorry a "mosque" in Norway. I don't give a flying fuck about his rights to finance his wahhabist buddies abroad. This in no way tramples rights of muslims anywhere, not even in Saudi Arabia.

Too bad that's not what the quoted content says. It suggests a broad-brush ban on funding from any and all Saudi citizens, which is essentially holding them accountable for the failures of their government, and morally wrong.

And maybe this will come as a shock to you (I doubt it), but not all Saudis, or even all Saudis who might want to put money towards a religious institution overseas, are oil tycoon billionaires with private yachts who chant death to America in their free time.

It would be incredibly naive to think that the Saudi millionaires are somehow detached from the good graces of the royal family and the clerics. It's entirely possible that the contributions to mosques abroad are just business as usual to stay on the positive side of the clerical institutions. These are not the average Saudis by a long shot, they are part of the country's power elite. I'd rather save my sympathy for the millions of victims of religious violence that they are responsible for.

Sure, it's possible that the money was actually coming from Saudi citizens and the millionaire or the instance giving the funding is just the fund-raiser and not the source. The original motivation might even be perfectly innocous, such as building the northermost mosque in the world. But so what? They are not Norwegian citizens, and wahhabist mosques do more harm than good, whether the average Saudi realizes this or not. If the Saudis who fund these mosques abroad, millionaires or not, are so unfairly treated by lack of religious freedoms they should look in a mirror and fix their own country first.

The rules only apply to government sanctioned mosques. If they find them too restrictive, they can always opt out.

Yes, they can "opt out" and lose their licensing. I'm sure that's a tenable and realistic option for most of them.

But more importantly, you are pussyfooting around the issue, which is that the rules are being applied to Muslims and only Muslims, and are a blatant attempt by the government to force its own identity onto the country's Muslim community - in essence, show them who's the boss.

So, what I just said stands. This is a fucking disgrace, it goes against everything a free society should stand for, and everyone on this forum should be condemning it without hesitation.

It's no more of a disgrace than anything else governments normally do. Austrian government requires that school curriculum includes German language, Austrian national history, and so on. Austrian government requires that government agencies provide services in German. I would wager that Austria might have laws about tax-breaks for non-profit organizations, if they can prove their beneficiality to society, or financing laws (like Norway) that put some limits on foreign funding in certain areas. This kind of measures are hardly disgraceful, they aren't even controversial. Almost every country in the world has such laws.

Furthermore, requiring mosques to teach in German helps recent immigrants in learnign the language and integrating to society. The funding is not really an issue, as the law also grants Islamic community to collect tax from its members, like the Christian denominations in Austria do. So far the only perceived problem with the law is uneven treatment with official Christian churches, but A) the Christian churches probably are already using German-translation of the bible and are domestically funded, and B) the whole notion of government having "state religions" is about having some sects having special status, so complaining about treating different sects differently under the law is a bit hypocritical. Sure it would be better if same restrictions were also imposed on Christian churches, but I don't think failing to do so can be described as a disgrace by any stretch of the word.

Frankly I don't believe the law harms the average muslim in Austria. The only ones who seem to be butt-hurt about it are the Turkish funders and imams whose paychecks would be cut off.

 

[Archimedes]

wat

Emphasis on "an".

Austria has official religions?

 

[barbos]

Emphasis on "an".

Austria has official religions?

Yeah, what's up with that?
I heard that in Germany people pay church tax or something. Even atheists have to pay it. Now imagine paying money to another official religion - islam.

 

[Jayjay]

Austria has official religions?

Yeah, what's up with that?
I heard that in Germany people pay church tax or something. Even atheists have to pay it. Now imagine paying money to another official religion - islam.

I think only the members pay the church tax (that's how it works over here anyway).

The idea behind is of course grounded in historical importance of the clergy, but even as an atheist I can kind of appreciate the idea: by having an official, wishy-washy state religion, it's kind of an vaccination against more virulent and harmful strains. Look at the US, it's always had a rather secular laws, and as a result is a breeding ground of all sorts of crazy cults.

 

[barbos]

Yeah, what's up with that?
I heard that in Germany people pay church tax or something. Even atheists have to pay it. Now imagine paying money to another official religion - islam.

I think only the members pay the church tax (that's how it works over here anyway).

The idea behind is of course grounded in historical importance of the clergy, but even as an atheist I can kind of appreciate the idea: by having an official, wishy-washy state religion, it's kind of an vaccination against more virulent and harmful strains. Look at the US, it's always had a rather secular laws, and as a result is a breeding ground of all sorts of crazy cults.

Yes, I realize that now, but still I was surprised when I heard it first time.
It's better to keep these pesky pastors on a payroll. Soviet Union was doing the same, and Russia now effectively doing it too.

 

[Warpoet]

In other words, you assumed the policy was anti-democratic and xenophobic because of the source and didn't bother to check the background. As for relevance, that's for Clive to explain. I was merely commenting on your broad-brushing Norway.

No. Read for comprehension. It's not my job to do Clive's work for him, so my response was based on what he posted. I don't have a definitive stance on Norway's policies, because it doesn't appear that that's even relevant here.

It would be incredibly naive to think that the Saudi millionaires are somehow detached from the good graces of the royal family and the clerics. It's entirely possible that the contributions to mosques abroad are just business as usual to stay on the positive side of the clerical institutions. These are not the average Saudis by a long shot, they are part of the country's power elite. I'd rather save my sympathy for the millions of victims of religious violence that they are responsible for.

The source of the funding should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

It is ludicrous to suggest that an across-the-board ban on all funding from all Saudi citizens is a fair and equitable solution.

Sure, it's possible that the money was actually coming from Saudi citizens and the millionaire or the instance giving the funding is just the fund-raiser and not the source. The original motivation might even be perfectly innocous, such as building the northermost mosque in the world. But so what? They are not Norwegian citizens, and wahhabist mosques do more harm than good, whether the average Saudi realizes this or not. If the Saudis who fund these mosques abroad, millionaires or not, are so unfairly treated by lack of religious freedoms they should look in a mirror and fix their own country first.

Oh, and so now we're back to assigning blame to everyone who happens to belong to a certain group and holding them accountable for the actions of other people.

Last time, you were trying to blame all of Europe's Muslims for the actions of people who shoot up the offices of cartoonists. Now you're blaming everyone who happens to be of a certain nationality (Saudi) for the problems with their government, which is a monarchy where average citizens have hardly any say over anything.

And the worst part is that you don't even see what's wrong with this.

It's no more of a disgrace than anything else governments normally do. Austrian government requires that school curriculum includes German language, Austrian national history, and so on. Austrian government requires that government agencies provide services in German. I would wager that Austria might have laws about tax-breaks for non-profit organizations, if they can prove their beneficiality to society, or financing laws (like Norway) that put some limits on foreign funding in certain areas. This kind of measures are hardly disgraceful, they aren't even controversial. Almost every country in the world has such laws.

Furthermore, requiring mosques to teach in German helps recent immigrants in learnign the language and integrating to society. The funding is not really an issue, as the law also grants Islamic community to collect tax from its members, like the Christian denominations in Austria do. So far the only perceived problem with the law is uneven treatment with official Christian churches, but A) the Christian churches probably are already using German-translation of the bible and are domestically funded, and B) the whole notion of government having "state religions" is about having some sects having special status, so complaining about treating different sects differently under the law is a bit hypocritical. Sure it would be better if same restrictions were also imposed on Christian churches, but I don't think failing to do so can be described as a disgrace by any stretch of the word.

Stop whitewashing what's happening here.

The Austrian government is not applying these measures to immigrants, they are applying them to Muslims. Immigrant =/= Muslim. Nor are Muslims the only people likely to come to Austria with language barriers, or build houses of worship using texts written in a foreign language, nor are they the only group that might conceivably seek funding for such projects from overseas.

And they are not forcing all religious institutions, even new ones, to "prove their beneficiality;" they are only forcing mosques to do so. The lawmakers could have applied this broadly, but they didn't. They targeted Muslims and Muslims exclusively.

So how the fuck is this just business as usual? It is a blatantly obvious attempt at singling out Austrian Muslims, to show them who's the boss and that they are going to be forced to play by different rules than everyone else. This is a clear-cut, unequivocal case of discrimination. And I think the reason you won't acknowledge that is that you don't actually have a problem with it.