Austria's government said Friday that it is closing seven mosques and plans to expel imams in a crackdown on "political Islam" and foreign financing of religious groups. Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the government is shutting a hardline Turkish nationalist mosque in Vienna and dissolving a group called the Arab Religious Community that runs six mosques. Interior Minister Herbert Kickl said the residence permits of around 40 imams employed by ATIB, a group that oversees Turkish mosques in Austria, are being reviewed because of concerns about such financing. "Parallel societies, political Islam and tendencies toward radicalization have no place in our country," Kurz told reporters in Vienna. "It is an attempt to target Muslim communities for the sake of scoring cheap political points," spokesman Ibrahim Kalin wrote on Twitter.

Source: ABC News June 08, 2018 07:09 UTC