A few weeks after his release from prison, Austrian Islamist Mohamed M. is highly active again. He regularly appears in mosques, rails against the West and glorifies terrorism.

Mohamed M. at a Vienna mosque

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The location of the event is bizarre: The Dar us-Salam mosque, a meeting place for Austrian Islamists on Vienna’s “Gürtel” ring road, is sandwiched between a strip club and a catholic church. But that does not discourage young radical Muslims from coming regularly to the religious location situated in the basement of a 19th century building in Vienna’s 8th district.

The reason for the inrush of young Islamists are the lectures by Mohammed M. . Since the end of September, two weeks after his release from prison, the now 27-year-old holds speeches about the “true Islam” – the last one Tuesday night:
“There are people who say: Terrorism has nothing to do with Islam,” Mohamed whispers to the audience. “You’re a liar if you say that. Terrorism is an Ibada.”

Mohamed agitates against the West, against infidels and especially against moderate Muslims, who in his opinion, abandon the Islamic Ummah. As seen on a video released on YouTube, in the midst of one of his lectures, the Islamist calls for carrying weapons. “This is the glory of Islam,” says M. and pulls a switchblade out of his pocket.

Under observation

In 2007 Mohamed M. was convicted for “involvement in a terrorist organization” to four years in prison. However, he is still under further observation by austrian authorities after his release. But the Islamist’ is cunning. He knows exactly how far he can go when people are listening to his speeches on the Internet. The moment a sentence would violate criminal law, he interrupts his statement with the word “Khalas” (Egyptian Arabic for “enough”): “Whoever insults the Prophet – Khalas, and that’s all I need to say, otherwise I’m back tomorrow in the Josefstadt (note: Josefstadt is a common description for a Prison in Vienna).”

Mohammed’s messages are being disseminated through multiple channels on the Internet. For example on the blog  “al-Ghooraba” (Arabic: ‘the strangers’) which publishes M.’s lectures and messages. But that could be delicate for the convicted Islamist: If the authorities succeed in proving that M. runs the blog, it could bring new charges against him for supporting a terrorist organization, because there is not only a German version of  “al-Ghooraba” but also an Arabic one which distributes messages from the “Global Islamic Media Front” (GIMF). The organisation regularly translates and publishes al-Qaeda videos.

Interestingly, M. states that he doesn’t have objections against another stayin prison: “In prison you have everything you need: a warm bed, a pillow, you can also buy a water boiler to make tea”,  he says in one of his video messages. “You can even buy cake in prison, what more do you want?”

NOTE: I sincerely apologize for all mistakes, but I’m not a native English speaker. Feel free to mail or tweet me possible errors.

(Author: Stefan Binder. Published on October 13th in “KURIER“. All rights reserved)