“Christians Must Die”: Jihad in Austria

Gatestone Institute

Two young Muslims living in Austria recently confessed that they wanted to “kill Christians” and “restore the caliphate.”

The two boys, aged 15 and 16, were arrested and tried at the Leoben Regional Court on July 16, 2023. They had made plans to massacre as many people as possible during an attack on the middle school attended by the 15-year-old, in Bruck an der Mur, where they both lived.

When confronted in court, the unrepentant Muslims—who both have a history of violence and criminality—admitted that “We wanted to shoot all the Christians in the class!”  Asked how they would have responded if police had intervened, they said “We would have surrendered”—adding that “Allah would have forgiven” them in prison, since “Killing Christians takes us to paradise.”

Reflecting on the two would-be mass murderers, one report notes that

They seem completely inconspicuous—a 16-year-old automotive apprentice and his 15-year-old friend from Bruck. But something dark was brewing in their heads. Although they were born in Austria and integrated into society, they have radicalized themselves severely. Their goal: to make Austria a caliphate. For this they also accepted to walk over corpses…. All Christians should be killed.

Authorities first learned of their plans after they began posting and asking for terrorist related material—including ISIS beheading videos—on radical chat groups:

The boys also made it clear via platforms that they didn’t believe in ‘boring knife attacks.’ They wanted to use explosives much more because they could ‘kill’ many more people at the same time…. and they repeatedly expressed their hatred of the West, which oppresses Muslims.

The court sentenced them to two years’ imprisonment—though they only need to serve eight months.  (The maximum penalty for juveniles is five years.)  The court also ordered that they undergo “anti-aggression training and a de-radicalization program” (which have repeatedly proven ineffective).

This entire incident is a reminder that Austria is living on the edge of a precipice.  Although it is good that authorities managed to thwart what could have been a tragic massacre of schoolchildren—as they thwarted an earlier one in 2020—Muslim hostility continues to grow in Austria, suggesting that it is only a matter of time before a severe terrorist strike or worse overwhelms that nation.

As far back as 2017, an article titled, “Austrians living in fear as violent migrant gangs carry out DAILY attacks in Vienna,” reported:

Muggings and beatings are becoming commonplace in the historic capital city, with passersby being attacked on almost a daily basis….The Praterstern area, just outside central Vienna, is now controlled by North Africans and is considered the worst area in the city for crime. Despite police increasing their presence in the area it has become riddled with crime. On the other side of the city, the area surrounding the West Railway Station has been taken over by Afghans who have been making headlines for all the wrong reasons…. Crimes carried out by migrants in Austria have risen rapidly over the past year as more arrive in the country. Last year [2016], there were a total 22,000 criminal complaints against migrants, up from 14,000 in 2015, the Austrian Interior Ministry revealed. Sex attacks carried out by asylum seekers has become a serious problem in Austria, with a 133 per cent increase in migrant sex attacks in the past year since the migrant crisis erupted. Swimming pools and other public venues have become some of the most prevalent areas for attacks to take place.

Indeed, as in other European nations, sex crimes—including against young boys—have skyrocketed in Austria.    According to one report, “Hardly a day goes by without reports of sex attacks” at the hands of migrants. In one incident, a 17-year-old Muslim asylum seeker raped a grandmother, aged 72, after she helped him out of a canal.  Last reported, her daughter said the elderly woman was in an intensive care unit, where she had “lost the will to live” and was “experiencing a terrible end.”

Some police have apparently been less than responsive—possibly even victim blaming. After a 20-year-old Austrian woman waiting at a bus stop in Vienna was attacked, beat, and robbed by four Muslim men—including one who “started [by] putting his hands through my hair and made it clear that in his cultural background there were hardly any blonde women”—police responded by telling the victim to dye her hair:

At first I was scared, but now I’m more angry than anything. After the attack they told me that women shouldn’t be alone on the streets after 8pm. And they also gave me other advice, telling me I should dye my hair dark and also not dress in such a provocative way. Indirectly that means I was partly to blame for what happened to me. That is a massive insult.

The flipside to generic Muslim criminality in Austria is ideological hate for Christianity.  Just as two youth were recently tried for their desire to “kill Christians,” and thereby “go to paradise,” so have there been numerous instances of other Muslims expressing their hostility for Austria’s historic faith.

A few examples follow:

• 11/2020: A Muslim terror attack targeting a Catholic youth group was thwarted at the last minute. According to the report, “[The] killer wanted to cause a bloodbath of the Catholic youth group … during a prayer evening in Vienna. The Islamist failed, however, because of a door that was locked by a timer … 17 children and young people belonging to a Catholic youth group escaped a catastrophe by a hair!”
• 12/2016: A 22-year-old Muslim asylum seeker from Afghanistan stabbed a 50-year-old Christian woman with a knife for reading from the Bible. The man “had taken offence to the fact that the woman had been invited by Christian residents of the property to discuss the Bible. When he found out what she was doing, he stormed into the kitchen where the woman was standing and tried to plunge the knife into her upper body.”
• 4/2022 A Muslim man chased, beat, and kicked a Christian man for distributing Bibles in the streets of Vienna-Meidling.
• 5/2017: What was described as a “dark skinned immigrant” was videotaped by a bystander throwing things and striking at the large cross in front of the St. Marein parish with a long pole and causing 15,000 Euros’ worth of general damage to the property.
• 3/2014: After reportedly listening to Muslim chants, a man went on a church vandalizing spree and desecrated four churches, including by overturning and/or destroying statues, crosses, and altars.
• 10/2020: A Muslim mob consisting of some 50 people entered and rioted inside a church in Vienna, screaming “Allahu Akbar” while gathered around the baptismal font and confessionals.
• 4/2020: Above the Traisen-Markt train station, passengers encountered graffiti—“Christians must die” and “Allahu Akbar”—that “caused a lot of agitation”
• 1/2021: Approximately 40 Muslim migrants rioted and burned down a Christmas tree in Favoriten. On coming to extinguish the large tree, the fire brigade heard one of the migrants yelling: “A Christmas tree has no place in a Muslim district,” even as the raging mob pelted the emergency service officials with projectiles to screams of “Allahu Akbar.”

A quick search finds other recent incidents, including the beheading of Jesus and Mary statues in a beloved Viennese prayer garden just last month, July 2023.

Perhaps most alarming is that all of this hostility and violence is taking place in a backdrop where the Muslim population continues to burgeon in Austria—to the point that there are now more Muslim students than Catholics in the schools of Austrian cities, including Vienna, the capital, and Linz.

As of 2021, Muslims reportedly accounted for 8.3% of Austria’s population.  According to a 2017 PEW report, by 2050, Muslims might account for as much as 19.9% of Austria’s population.

The significance of these numbers is exacerbated by the fact that Muslims are not assimilating in Austria.  Rather the reverse is true—Austrians are expected to accommodate Muslim sensibilities.

According to one report titled, “Catholic children forced to learn Islamic songs at [an] Austrian elementary school”: “At an elementary school in Linz, Catholic children have to memorise and recite Islamic songs as part of the Islamic Ramadan festival. They were forced to take part and were punished if they refused.”  After picking up her young son from school, one Catholic mother was shocked to hear him loudly chanting “Allah, Allah!”  He told her that for two months the entire class had been compelled to sing songs about Islam, or else risk punishment.  “It felt like a slap in my face!” said the mother in an interview.

Most recently, in May, 2023, a report found that mosques in Austria were actively teaching Muslim youth not to befriend native Austrians or any other non-Muslims.  While some politicians—such as Manfred Haimbuchner of Austria’s conservative Freedom Party—expressed shock and outrage at this teaching, it is, in fact, a mainstream Muslim doctrine. According to Koran 3:28:

Those who believe should not take unbelievers as their friends in preference to those who believe—and whoever does so should have no [expectations] of God—unless to safeguard [taqaa, from taqiyya] yourselves against them.

Koran 5:51 is even more explicit, and names names:

O believers, do not hold Jews and Christians as your allies. They are allies of one another; and anyone who makes them his friends is surely one of them.

Little wonder the miniscule Jewish population of Austria is also under attack—as when Muslim terrorists stormed and opened fire in a Viennese synagogue in 1981, killing two and wounded 18.  More recently, in 2021, according to Deutsche Welle, “Antisemitic crimes hit record high in Austria.”

*****

In 1683, hundreds of thousands of Muslim jihadists, led by the Ottoman Turks, encircled and laid siege to Vienna.  There was a reason they chose that city.  For centuries, it had been the capital of the Holy Roman Empire—which itself had long been, as the “Defender of the Faith,” the chief nemesis of Islamic jihad.  At the final moment, the Europeans defeated the Muslims and lifted the siege, thereby saving not just Vienna but all of Europe.

Clearly much has since changed.  Today, Muslims are, in the name of “multiculturalism,” making the sorts of inroads in Austria, and all throughout Europe, that their ancestors could never have dreamt were possible.  But this is less a reflection of Islam—which is today significantly weaker than in its Ottoman heyday—and more a reflection of a swiftly dying secular Europe.