Kurz should first clean up radicals in Austria, which would also help BiH

Austria is a friendly country to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Minister Kurz's statements have an exclusively day-to-day political role and do not represent the official stance of Austrian authorities, says dr. Jasmin Ahić, a professor at the Faculty of Criminal Justice, Criminology and Security Studies in Sarajevo, for the Patria agency, commenting on the statement by Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, who said that women in Sarajevo and Pristina are paid to walk the streets fully covered in order to change the image of the city.

Minister Kurz's statement has caused sharp reactions in the BiH public. Kurz is accused of first needing to clean up extremists in his own backyard, as Austria itself is mentioned as a country from which some radical circles of people have come or are coming to BiH.

Professor Ahić believes that Kurz has actually found a cheap but effective way with this statement to gain certain political points for his party and himself in his country, and that he does not think there is any deeper background to it all.

Reports in the German press from January of this year also support the thesis of those who claim that fewer radical circles in Austria would reduce pressure on BiH, which precisely write that "The arrest of Salafist leaders in Austria reduces the influence of Wahhabis in Southeast Europe".

Austrian media reported at the beginning of the year that 14 people were arrested in Vienna and Graz on suspicion of organizing a radical Islamic organization and recruiting new members. Some of these members are of BiH origin, so BiH security agencies actively participated in their detection.

"Nedžad B. has an enormously large influence on radical Balkan Wahhabis, and he also supports and finances some of them. Salafist sermons spread via the internet. One of his students was Mevlid Jašarević, who attacked the American Embassy in Sarajevo with a Kalashnikov in 2011. And he, according to his mother's statements, became radicalized in a mosque in Vienna through Nedžad B... Nedžad B., arrested in January, is accused of participating in a terrorist organization as well as forming an organization that is hostile to the state, which he denies," writes Adelheid Welfl in Vienna's Standard and quotes BiH security expert Vlado Azinović, who says that Nedžad B. is the most radical BiH Salafist in the diaspora. He advocates the so-called Takfiri ideology, according to which he gives himself the right to decide who is a good Muslim and who is not. Supporters of such an ideology legitimize violence against 'bad Muslims'.

"After Mirsad O. was convicted and after Nedžad B. was arrested, the Takfiri group was decapitated," says Azinović, as reported by the Standard newspaper, noting that in Vienna, there is indeed another group that still has a strong ideological and financial influence on Wahhabis in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 "However, with the efforts of the Islamic Community in BiH, these groups have abandoned their open support for the terrorist organization 'Islamic State' and have accepted the official Islamic Community and its head, reis-ul-ulema Husein Kavazović." Terrorism expert Azinović, however, believes that this is a 'Trojan horse', meaning that Salafists are actually trying to break the Islamic Community in BiH from within and take leadership.

The Islamic Community in BiH also reacted to Kurz's statement. This umbrella institution of Muslims in BiH considers the statement by the Austrian Foreign Minister, in which it is said that "in Sarajevo and Pristina, women are paid to walk the streets fully covered, in order to change the image in the city," to be inappropriate.

"The Islamic Community in BiH has no knowledge that anyone is paying Muslim women in BiH to dress in a certain way and holds the position that everyone has the right, including Muslim women, to dress in a way they wish," the statement from the Public Relations Office of the Riyaset reads.

Two days after Minister Kurz's controversial statement, reis-ul-ulema Kavazović received the Austrian Ambassador to BiH Martin Pammer, to whom he presented a letter addressed to Minister Kurz, outlining the position of the Islamic Community in BiH on the issue of women's veiling as well as on Minister Kurz's statement itself, writes Patria.