New Austrian State-Backed Report targets and criminalises Muslim Identity

Vienna - The recently published report, “Was ist populistisch am politischen Islam?”, by Austria’s state-funded Documentation Centre for Political Islam (DPI) is a politically motivated hit piece. It operates within a political framework that has consistently sought to stigmatise, delegitimise and criminalise Muslim individuals and organisations who challenge state Islamophobia. By categorising Muslim civil rights advocacy as a threat to democracy, the DPI reinforces a state narrative in which dissent against discriminatory policies is reframed as extremism.

The DPI is a state-funded institution established under Austria’s government-led campaign against so-called “political Islam,” it is institutionally Islamophobic as evidenced by its records of anti-Muslim activities;

• Played a central role in shaping the narrative environment surrounding the 2020 Operation Luxor raids - later ruled unlawful by Austrian courts - by promoting the securitisation of Muslim individuals and organisations;
• Published the widely condemned “Islam Map,” which publicly listed the names and addresses of Muslim organisations across Austria, exposing them to harassment and effectively institutionalising suspicion toward Muslim civic life;
• Continues to advance reports and classifications that frame Muslim civil society actors and advocacy groups as ideological or democratic threats, reinforcing a climate of surveillance and criminalisation.

Our previous report, Operation Luxor: Unraveling the Myths Behind Austria’s Largest Ever Peacetime Police Raids, we documented how the state’s campaign against so-called “political Islam” created the conditions for the 2020 Operation Luxor raids - the largest peacetime police operation in post-war Austria. Those raids, carried out under then Interior Minister Karl Nehammer, were later ruled unlawful by Austrian courts, and none of the individuals targeted have been charged let alone convicted of any offences. Our work demonstrated how securitised narratives and politicised “expertise” were instrumentalised to justify state sponsored intimidation against Muslim communities.

The DPI’s authoritarian posture is laid bare in its direct attack on the CAGE Manifesto. The report condemns our demand that Muslim minorities must be free from “state persecution” and “government interference,” and challenges our position that Islamophobia must be understood “first and foremost as a structural problem.” By framing these foundational fair demands as dangerous “populist agitation” that threatens the “democratic immune system,” the DPI advances the premise that Muslims advocating for their civil liberties represent an “extremist threat”. 

Furthermore, the DPI attempts to gaslight the public by shielding the state from accountability. The report attacks our organisation, and others like the Dokustelle, for calling out the deeply Islamophobic 2020 “Operation Luxor” police raids as “unjustified repression” and an expression of “state-sponsored Islamophobia.” When discriminatory state actions such as planned headscarf bans for children or state interference in Islamic education are protested, this state-funded apparatus dismisses the lived reality of structural discrimination. It cynically categorises the defence of civil rights as an “ideological distortion” and a manipulative “us versus them” tactic designed to foster a so-called “victimhood” narrative.

Most concerning is the report’s own acknowledgment of the consequences attached to its classifications. It notes that mere association with CAGE at a university event triggered a parliamentary inquiry (parlamentarische Anfrage) by a right-wing populist party. It further references how similar categorisations of Muslim organisations have been used to justify political demands for prohibition, leading to bans and police action. Inclusion in a DPI report therefore carries political and legal ramifications within Austria’s hostile climate.

CAGE will continue to assert that Muslims in Austria are entitled to full civil, political and religious freedoms without exceptional surveillance, securitisation or state interference. Attempts to repackage structural discrimination as democratic protection, or to frame Muslim civic participation as inherently suspect, will continue to be exposed as efforts to normalise the criminalisation of Islam.