Islamic kindergartens cause a stir in Austria

3,000 rescued off Libya coast

VIENNA, April 16, (Agencies): A debate is raging in Austria after a study suggested that Islamic kindergartens in Vienna were helping to create “parallel societies” or even produce the dangerous homegrown radicals of the future.

According to its author, Ednan Aslan, a Turkishborn Austrian professor at Vienna University, some 10,000 children aged two to six attend around 150 Muslim preschools, teaching the Koran much like Christian ones do with Bible studies.

At least a quarter are backed by groups propagating arch conservative strains of Islam like Salafism, or organisations that see religion not just as a private matter but integral to politics and society, Aslan believes.

“Parents are sending their kids to establishments that ensure they are in a Muslim setting and learn a few suras (chapters from the Holy Quran),” Aslan, a respected researcher into Islamic education, told AFP.

“But they are unaware that they are shutting them off from a multicultural society,” he said.

The study, published last year, has been jumped on by critics of immigration – not least the far-right Freedom Party – in the wake of attacks such as Paris and Brussels perpetrated by Muslims who grew up in Europe.

But many reject Aslan’s findings, questioning its methodology.

The magazine Biber, which writes for and about minorities, sent a veiled Muslim reporter undercover posing as a mother looking for a place for her son at 14 Muslim kindergartens.

She found no evidence to back up Aslan’s suggestions that they were churning out “little Salafists” or that things like the children singing – frowned upon by ultra-strict Muslims – were banned.

Orban

Problematic

But around a third were according to the magazine “problematic”, “cutting off or isolating children” from mainstream society. It also voiced concerns about the “openness” of some staff and the level of German spoken.

Vienna City Hall has since sought to calm the situation by commissioning an in-depth study involving a six-strong research team which will be published later this year.

But the first problem is establishing how many Islamic kindergartens there are. Vienna has 842 registered kindergartens, 100 of them Catholic-run and 13 Protestant, but the number of Muslim ones is not known.

Part of the reason is that there has been an explosion in the number that are privately run, stretching the ability of the authorities to keep tabs and allowing some to operate under the radar.

Vienna is home to 1.8 million people, half of whom have a parent born abroad or who were born abroad themselves. Ever since it was the capital of a vast empire, it has been a magnet for outsiders, not all of them always welcome.

“But what is new in recent years has been the religious aspect of the debate about integration,” said Thomas Schmidinger, political scientist and Islam specialist at Vienna University.

Meanwhile, facing protests at home and abroad over controversial new laws on universities and nongovernmental organisations, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said protests are “secondary theatres of conflict” compared to his battle against immigration, as thousands of people again took to the streets Saturday.

The latest rally against the university law and other government policies drew a crowd estimated by local media at 10,000 people in the Hungarian capital Budapest. Urging a reform of the election system, anti-government activist Marton Gulyas told the crowd that under current rules, introduced in 2012 and 2013 and seen by critics as favouring Orban’s ruling party Fidesz, it was impossible to oust the premier.

“As long as (parties) are measured by Fidesz election rules, they will win,” he said.

Education

A higher education bill fast-tracked through parliament on April 5 has been widely seen as directly targeting the Central European University (CEU), founded by US billionaire George Soros in 1991.

The law has triggered the largest series of protests seen in Budapest since Orban came to power in 2010.

Another law that would force nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) to register as “foreign-funded organisations” was submitted to parliament earlier this month, and has also prompted international condemnation and street demonstrations.

Calling international politics “a theatre of conflict” Orban said in an interview that “migration lies at the centre of that theatre of conflict”.

In another development, the Italian coastguard and other boats rescued some 3,000 migrants from unseaworthy boats off the Libyan coast on Saturday, as the good weather pushes the numbers up, a participating NGO said.

In all 35 rescue operations were launched during the day, with 15 of them still underway as night fell, the coastguard said.

German NGO Jugend Rettet, which took part in the rescue operations on Saturday, said 3,000 people had been plucked to safety during a particularly busy day due to the fine Spring weather in the Mediterranean.

Jugend Rettet spokeswoman Pauline Schmidt told AFP that a further 1,000 people remained to be rescued from inflatable dinghies and other craft, with the rescue ships reaching capacity.

Other, mainly non-governmental, boats were expected to arrive in the area to help the rescue operations, she said. “We have never had to deal with so many people at the same time.”

On Friday rescue vessels worked flat out to rescue over 2,000 people from flimsy dinghies.

In Barcelona, Spain, Spain’s maritime rescue said Saturday it has rescued 125 migrants trying to make nighttime crossings from Africa in three smuggling boats.

All three of the small boats were located before daybreak on Saturday.

The first boat, carrying 41 men and 11 women of sub-Saharan origin, was located by rescue teams shortly after midnight in the Alboran Sea east of the Strait of Gibraltar. The Red Cross said all were in good health.

A second group of 62 North African males, including 11 minors, was packed into a wooden boat when rescued just west of the Strait in the Atlantic Ocean.