Thomas Schmidinger1

1 Muslim Populations

The history of living in the later Habsburg territories predates the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into the region. Smail Balić argued that together with the Hungarian establishment in the Pannonian plains in 895, nomads of Asian origin, who were followers of Islam, entered the region.2 Hungarian documents write about izmaeliták and böszörmények as Muslims in Hungary. It is possible that some of these Muslim groups conserved their religious identity until the Ottoman conquest in the 16th century. However, with the conquest of the region by Austria in the late 17th century almost all Muslims were deported. But with the treaty of Passarowitz (16 August 1718) subjects of the Ottoman Empire were per- mitted to settle in the Empire, although it was mostly Jews and Arme- nians who settled in cities like and Budapest. The largest number of Muslims came under Austrian control after the former Ottoman prov- inces of Bosnia and Herzegovina were occupied by Austrian troops in 1878. Despite the fact that many Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina fled to the Ottoman Empire, the majority stayed within the region and became Austrian subjects after the annexation of the territory in 1908. But after the collapse of the monarchy in the First World War, these territories were lost and only small groups of Muslims stayed within the borders of the new republic of Austria. Only a few private associations like the Orientbund or the Islamischer Kulturbund, led by Umar Rolf von Ehrenfels continued working as an organised Muslim community. After the Anschluß (the annexation of Austria to Nazi-Germany) Ehrenfels,

1 Thomas Schmidinger is lecturer at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Vienna, the University for Applied Science Vorarlberg and secretary general of the Aus- trian Association for Kurdish Studies. In 2012 he was participating in one of the expert round tables of the Dialogforum Islam initiated by the state-secretary of integration. 2 Balić, S. “Zur Geschichte der Muslime in Österreich I. Lebensräume und Konflikt- felder”, in S. Heine (ed.), Islam zwischen Selbstbild und Klischee. Eine Religion im österrei­ chischen Schulbuch (Vienna: Böhlau, 1995), pp. 23–35. 48 thomas schmidinger who was in opposition to the Nazis, had to emigrate and his association ­dissolved.3 But in 1943 another Muslim association was founded under Salih Hadžialić and with the patronage of the regime.4 After World War II some Muslim collaborators of the Nazis, predomi- nately of Bosnian and Soviet origin, were stranded in the American zone of occupation in Salzburg. That was one of the reasons why Salzburg became a centre of Muslim activism after 1945. A bigger number of Muslims immigrated from the 1960s on, when agreements for labour immigrants (‘Gastarbeiter’) were signed with ­ (1964) and (1966). But Austria also received refugees from Islamic countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and, in the 1990s, from Kosovo and Albania. In addition, Muslim diplomats lived in Vienna, where the UN, OPEC and other international organisations have offices. How- ever the biggest Muslim populations in Austria are of Turkish, ­Bosnian and Albanian origin. An assessment based on the census of 2001 suggests that in 2009 there was slightly more than 500,000 Muslims in Austria, making approx. 6% of the total population.5 Due to naturalisation, 49% of the Muslim popula- tion were in 2009; 21% were Turkish nationals; 10% had a pass- port from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 7% were from Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo, 3% from Macedonia, and 4% from the Russian Federation.6 Most of the latter were in fact Chechens who are one of the biggest groups of refugees in the last decade. But not all of these 500,000 Muslims are reli- gious and this number contains all Islamic groups, including heterodox groups like the Alevis or Nusayris. However, it must be stated that these numbers do not give any infor- mation about the self-definition of Muslims, their sectarian affiliation, personal beliefs and ‘religiosity’.

3 Krammel, G. / Abdelkarim, A., “Die Geschichte des Islam in Österreich”, in Schmidin- ger, T. / Larise, D., (eds.) Zwischen Gottesstaat und Demokratie, Handbuch des politischen Islam (Vienna: Deuticke, 2008), pp. 47–58. 4 Pritz, O., “Vom Moslemischen Sozialdienst zur islamischen Glaubensgemeinschaft”, (Dissertation, Universität Wien, 2006), p. 88. 5 Marik-Lebek, Stephan, ‘Die muslimische Bevölkerung Österreichs: Bestand und Veränderung 2001–2009’ (The Muslim population of Austria: state and changes 2001–2009), in Jane, Alexander and Mathias Vogl (eds.), Islam in Österreich (Islam in Austria), (Vienna: Österreichischer Integrationsfonds), 2010, pp. 5–9 (5). 6 www.integrationsfonds.at/wissen/publikationen/islam_in_oesterreich/#c6384, accessed 31 December 2012.