During the Corona pandemic, the state spent vast sums of aid money, and not in a purposeful way, as the Court of Auditors criticised only on Tuesday. Now it turns out that even associations with extremist backgrounds, of which the Documentation Centre Political Islam warns, benefited from subsidies.
Non-profit organisations (NPOs) were also extensively supplied with Corona funds during the pandemic. For this purpose, the government set up its own fund – the NPO Support Fund. Grants flowed from it to “non-profit organisations from all walks of life”, it says on the homepage, “from the social sector to culture to sport, voluntary fire brigades or legally recognised religious communities”.
Around five million euros of this went to Islamic associations in the past three years, some of which, however, clearly belong to political Islam, as the Freedom Party now criticises. “This is a scandal and a real slap in the face of the Austrians,” says Freedom Party Secretary General Christian Hafenecker.
As an example, the Freedom Party points to the “Turkish-Islamic Union for Cultural and Social Cooperation in Austria”, or ATIB for short. “Even the Documentation Centre for Political Islam of the Federal Government attests in a basic report that this organisation has close ties to the state religious authority of Turkey and to Erdogan’s party AKP”, Hafenecker underlines. “It is therefore simply inconceivable that an essential arm of political Islam is being promoted with Corona aid money at taxpayer expense.”
Hafenecker believes that it was already foreseeable at the beginning of the pandemic that there would be funding for Islamist movements. In November 2020, Freedom Party (FPÖ) constitutional spokesperson Susanne Fürst introduced a motion in the National Council that aimed to stop funding for political Islam through the NPO Fund. “This Freedom Party motion was rejected at the time by the ÖVP, the Greens and the SPÖ. This was an oath of revelation that these parties deliberately wanted to make organisations of political Islam eligible for funding through the NPO Fund,” says Hafenecker.
These subsidies are available on the website of the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Public Service and Sport, which is legally obliged to publish all disbursements exceeding 1,500 euros per calendar year.
As a review of the funded associations shows, numerous funds also were given to associations of the “Islamic Federation”, which is considered the Austrian section of the Turkish Milli-Görüş movement. According to the Doku-Stelle Politischer Islam, the view of the “order of the West” as a “system to be overcome” is essential for the ideology. And: “Another relevant phenomenon is the effort to establish a parallel education system, which is supposed to serve as a shield against influences that are interpreted as un-Islamic. There are also links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
https://exxpress.at/fpoe-kritisiert-fuen-millionen-euro-corona-gelder-an-islamistische-vereine/