Austria’s Islamic kindergartens help create ‘parallel societies’: study

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In 1683, Muslim invaders were turned back from the gates of Vienna. Today, they are within Vienna’s borders, busy raising the next generation of anti-social Muslims.

A new report found that Muslim kindergartens are creating parallel societies, and possibly even dangerous homegrown radicals of the future. This was partially confirmed by independent undercover reporting.

Nobody really knows how many Muslim kindergartens there are in Vienna.

“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.”

“Austria’s Islamic kindergartens help create ‘parallel societies’: study,” The Local, April 16, 2017:

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 Turkish-born 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.

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At least a quarter are backed by groups propagating arch conservative strains of Islam like Salafism, or organizations 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 Koran),” 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.

Undercover

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.

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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.

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….