Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker has called for a constitutional ban on “political Islam”, arguing that the political use of religion is incompatible with Austria’s democracy and Western values.
Stocker first raised the proposal in a series of interviews with Austrian media on August 28. In an interview published that evening, Heute reported that the chancellor wanted to ban political Islam through a constitutional law.
Stocker told the newspaper: “When religion is used politically, we must confront it with all severity.” He also argued that “a political understanding of Islam is incompatible with democracy and Western values”.
Stocker made similar remarks in a separate interview with oe24.TV on August 28: “I clearly say: I am in favour of implementing a constitutional ban on political Islam.”
Pressed on how he would obtain the two-thirds parliamentary majority such a law would need, the chancellor said he did not know.
In Austria, “political Islam” refers not to a single, organised movement, but to several Islamist currents and networks that seek to translate religious ideas into a political and social programme. The government-backed Documentation Centre Political Islam (DPI), established as an independent fund of the Republic of Austria in July 2020, has investigated networks and organisations associated with political Islam, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Millî Görüş. It has also examined ATIB, an umbrella organisation for Turkish-Islamic associations in Austria connected to Diyanet, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs. Networks associated with Hizb ut-Tahrir have also featured in Austria’s debate.
Stocker, 66, has served as Austria’s chancellor since March 2025 and leads the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), which belongs to the European People’s Party (EPP) family at EU level. His government is a three-party coalition with the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and liberal NEOS.
The coalition was formed after the ÖVP ultimately ruled out governing with the right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ), despite the FPÖ emerging from the 2024 election as Austria’s largest party. Stocker’s decision to govern with the SPÖ and NEOS rather than the FPÖ has repeatedly forced the ÖVP to balance its more conservative positions against the priorities of its coalition partners.
That political arithmetic could make Stocker’s latest proposal difficult to advance. The initiative is not yet law, and both coalition partners have attached conditions to it. NEOS has not ruled out a ban but wants a proposal that can actually be legislated, along with a clear legal definition capable of withstanding judicial scrutiny. SPÖ state secretary Jörg Leichtfried said on August 31 that a democracy had to defend itself when religion was misused to attack it, and that his party would examine what the ÖVP put forward.
The FPÖ has dismissed the announcement. Party general secretary Michael Schnedlitz said the ÖVP had rejected freedom party motions on the subject for years. One such motion failed in the National Council on February 26, 2025, weeks after a fatal knife attack in Villach, southern Austria.
Europe and Integration Minister Claudia Bauer, also of the ÖVP, is now preparing a concrete proposal. Bauer wants to send a draft framework to the coalition partners as quickly as possible. She said the government programme provided the basis for both a ban and a broader package of measures covering associations, religious law and other areas of legislation.
Bauer also said the government would fight “political Islam and its organisations in Austria and Europe with all means”, describing it as “the greatest danger of our time”. She argued that it sought to place itself above the democratic constitutional State, reshape society and the State, and threaten the freedom of girls and women.
Austria’s Directorate of State Security and Intelligence (DSN) has welcomed the discussion of further legal measures. Any proposal would first have to secure the support of Stocker’s coalition partners and then pass through parliament, where a constitutional law requires a two-thirds majority. This does not mean that all organisations considered by Austrian authorities to be linked to political Islam would automatically be banned, nor has Stocker proposed banning each of them individually. Rather, the precise legal definition of the term, and which organisations or activities would fall within its scope, remain among the key questions any such legislation would have to address.
The proposal comes against the backdrop of demographic change in Austria.
According to Statistics Austria’s 2021 religious-affiliation survey, published in 2022, 745,600 people in Austria identified as Muslim, representing 8.3 per cent of the population, double the 4.2 per cent recorded in 2001. The Muslim presence is particularly pronounced among children in Vienna.
Figures collected by the Vienna education directorate show Muslims constituted 35 per cent of pupils in the city’s public primary schools in the 2023-24 school year, making Islam the largest single religious affiliation among primary-school children, ahead of the religiously unaffiliated at 26 per cent, Catholics at 21 per cent and Orthodox Christians at 13 per cent. Christian denominations together accounted for 37 per cent. Across compulsory schooling as a whole, the Muslim share has since reached 38.5 per cent.
The central question now is how Austria’s Government will define “political Islam” in constitutional law.
