Source: NPR
By SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON
Across the street from Vienna’s iconic Ferris wheel, the Schura Mosque is packed each Friday with Muslims who come to pray.
It’s one of some 300 mosques and prayer rooms serving 700,000 Muslims who live in Austria and who’ve enjoyed the same rights as Christians and Jews since Islam was made an official religion there in 1912.
A few mosques, like Vienna’s Islamic Center, even have a minaret. But they are silent these days, a metaphor of sorts for the low profile many Muslims are keeping because they no longer feel welcome in Austria. One of the worshipers at Schura Mosque on a recent Friday was Viennese Councilman Omar al-Rawi. He said Muslim asylum-seekers are especially afraid to enter mosques nowadays.
“They say, ‘We won’t go to pray because maybe they will think we are radicals so it’s better not to pray'” until their refugee status is approved, he explains.
Categories: Austria, Christianity, Europe, Intolerance, Jews, The Muslim Times