VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria’s right-wing government plans to shut seven mosques and could expel dozens of imams in what it said was “just the beginning” of a push against radical Islam and foreign funding of religious groups that Turkey condemned as racist. Leonhard Foeger / Reuters Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz attends a news conference in Vienna, Austria June 8, 2018. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said the new policy was part of an “Islamophobic, racist and discriminatory wave” in Austria. ATIB spokesman Yasar Ersoy acknowledged that its imams were paid by Diyanet, the Turkish state religious authority, but it was trying to change that. “We are currently working on having imams be paid from funds within the country,” he told ORF radio.

Source: Huffington Post June 08, 2018 21:56 UTC