By withdrawing the teaching licence of an anti-Semitic Islam religion teacher on Thursday, Austria’s education ministry has started to implement measures against extremist Muslim educators. The teacher had told his students at a Vienna secondary school not to buy from a list of international companies, because they were “Jewish.” Thursday’s decision was the latest development in a debate about political views held by Austria’s Islam teachers, after a study made public in late January found that 21.9 per cent of them opposed democracy on religious grounds. Since then, Austria’s Muslim community and Education Minister Claudia Schmied agreed on a plan to improve the quality of religious education. The plan also said that the Muslim community must revoke teaching licences to those “who have proved to disassociate themselves from democratic values or human rights.” However, Schmied did not wait for the teacher’s superiors to act, but said Thursday she had made her decision in order to avert “imminent danger” to his school and pupils.
