Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz recently announced that the government was shutting down a Turkish nationalist mosque in Vienna and dissolving a group called the Arab Religious Community that runs six mosques, according to the Associated Press. "Parallel societies, political Islam and tendencies toward radicalization have no place in our country," Kurz told reporters. "The move comes after images appeared on Twitter in April of children in a Turkish-backed mosque playing dead and reenacting the World War I battle of Gallipoli (in which an allied invasion of Ottoman Turkey was defeated). Their "corpses" were then covered in Turkish flags. The mosques association called the event 'highly regrettable,'" according to the CBN News. These decisions by the Austrian government also follow its 2015 "Islam Law", which bans foreign funding of religious groups and introduces a duty for Muslim organizations to have "a positive fundamental view towards [Austrian] state and society". The 2015 "Islam Law" of Austria, which Erdogan was protesting, states that "The freedom of religion is secured in the Austrian Constitution -- individually, collectively and cooperatively". This freedom should not be allowed to be exploited by those who incite hate or violence for any group. European governments should be alert and take all measures available to monitor mosques -- their sermons and activities -- and bring to account the imams who attempt to indoctrinate Muslims in teachings that imperil the safety and liberty of others. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned the Austrian government that "These measures taken by the Austrian chancellor are, I fear, leading the world towards a war between the cross and the crescent," he said, referring to Christianity and Islam. "You do this and we sit idle? It means we will take some steps too." He added that the "western world should get their act together." Austria is not the first European government taking precautions against Islamic radicalization. In 2016, the Washington Post reported:

After three major terrorist attacks in the last year and a half, public outrage has forced the French government to respond... ...Prime Minister Manuel Valls called for an outright ban on the foreign funding of mosques in France "for a period to be determined." Days later, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced that, in fact, more concrete measures had already been taken: Since December 2015, he said, 20 Salafist mosques were shut down altogether. "There is no place in France for those who call for and incite hatred in prayer halls or in mosques," Cazeneuve said.

Children reenacting the WW1 and playing dead at a place of worship might be considered out of ordinary for the 21^st century Austria and other EU countries, yet the public use of "child soldiers" in military costumes and with "toy guns" is extremely widespread in Turkey. At a private kindergarten in the city of Kirikkale, for example, children between the ages of 3 and 6 were also made to put on military costumes and take up "toy arms" to commemorate the 97^th anniversary of the battle of Gallipoli in 2012. According to news reports, "the martyred students were covered with Turkish flags." Such commemorations that normalize and even glorify killing are officially organized in Turkey. Events celebrating "the liberation from enemy forces" of every city and town across Turkey are held annually. The "enemies" are Western powers such as Britain, France, Russia and Greece as well as the Christian peoples of Turkey, who are portrayed as "criminal traitors", including Armenians, Anatolian Greeks and others. In many of these events, stage plays are performed by locals including children who "wipe out the enemy from the homeland and sacrifice their own lives" during and after the WW1. In 2011, for instance, during the ceremony of the liberation of the city of Bayburt, children in military costumes and with guns were put on stage. The "martyred" ones were -- as usual - covered in Turkish flags. There are countless examples.[1] The celebrations are not just about the glorification of guns and killing for national or religious purposes. The events are also marked by historic revisionism in which the victims of the 1914-1923 Christian genocide are blamed for their own extermination. "The Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks," by contrast, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) announced in 2007. Turkish historiography asserts that Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks were "dealt with" by Turks for their "criminal and treacherous" activities such as their political cooperation with other countries and the desire of these groups to establish an independent state of their own. On January 5, 2018, for instance, celebrated as the day the city of Adana was "liberated from enemies", the city's mayor, H