The Austrian Model

Modern Austria is home for 350,000 Muslims. Most are Turks and immigrants from ex-Yugoslavia, though many now come from the Middle East. Nationalist politicians and some reactionary Catholic clergymen have sounded some alarm bells about tension between Muslims and the traditional Catholic Austria.Thus far, however, neither high government officials nor the electorate at large have taken the bait. Indeed, the Alpine republic has steadily incorporated local Muslims into the body politic while respecting Islam and its legal heritage.Austria’s first mosque opened in 1979. Vienna’s mayor breaks the Ramadan fast with the faithful annually; some public bathing and swimming facilities in the city set aside special hours for Muslim women and their children.Austria, then, has so far escaped the friction with Muslims that has troubled France, England, and the Netherlands.What is important is not that succeeding governments in Vienna may be outperforming their European counterparts in a delicate task, but that Austrian leaders are working at it so diligently.From the middle of the 15th century until 1700, Austria faced repeated armed onslaughts from the Ottoman Turks. Their publicly proclaimed goal was a world caliphate that would bring peace to mankind on Koranic terms. Though the Ottomans abandoned sieges of Vienna in 1529 and 1683, they occupied modern Budapest between 1541 and 1685 and most of Hungary south of the Danube until 1699. Confronting the Ottoman advance was the house of Habsburg and its central European empire. Along with the Church of Rome, the devoutly Catholic Austrian dynasty cobbled together the resistance that eventually checked Islamic expansion in Europe.Weapons were crucial, but so were popular feelings. Church and state used words, pictures, even music to frighten their peoples into fighting and financing war against what Austrians called the “hereditary enemy.” The Muslim as brute, lecher, slave taker, and hypocrite, especially when drinking, turned up repeatedly in paintings, sermons, popular broadsides and song, and theatrical performances that reached all levels of society. When the Turk actually followed the model of his horrific press, Christendom’s dim take on Islam only darkened. What is historically remarkable in this story is that this is only its first chapter. Many Austrians and other central Europeans tempered their views of Turks and Muslims very quickly. A string of decisive Christian victories over Ottoman forces in Hungary and the Balkans between 1683 and 1718 certainly relaxed fears in Vienna. So did a fading Ottoman military and administrative might after 1683 that forever precluded major westward offensives.But physical security was only one factor that persuaded Austrians and other peoples of the Habsburg empire to look at the “Turk” and his faith differently.Long before the Ottoman-Habsburg wars ended, possibilities for peaceful relations between Christian and Muslim were apparent. Everyday commercial relations between the two populations could be cordial, especially along mutual borders. Merchants of many faiths from Constantinople found their way into the Habsburg lands even in the 16th and 17th centuries, bringing with them products that Austrians, Hungarians, Czechs, and others soon found indispensable.The emblematic commodity of this trade was coffee. Drunk by Muslims and Christians at the formally teetotaling court in Constantinople to celebrate diplomatic and commercial arrangements of all kinds, the beverage pleased Westerners so much that they complained when it was not served.And curiosity in the Habsburg lands about the reality of Ottoman ways was genuine. Widely-read travel accounts, captive narratives, even sermons and popular songs informed people by mixing fact with fear about the enemy quite artlessly.The government of Vienna and the Austrian church also had left openings for reconciliation with the Ottoman Turks. While both institutions welcomed Muslim converts to Roman Catholicism, the primary aim of the Habsburgs was to defend their holdings and not to exterminate Islam. Catholic admonitions about the sinfulness of pride and warnings from the pulpit that the Turks might once again be back kept the insults of Christian triumphalism under wraps for some time after 1683.Most importantly, Habsburg regimes had realized that stereotypes were imperfect guides when dealing with the Ottomans. Consuls and emissaries fluent in Balkan languages, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic were far more useful.The Oriental Academy, opened in Vienna in 1754, stressed linguistic skills. Its faculty, however, soon decided that its graduates would be even more helpful when they were familiar with the economies, legal systems, history, and literature of alien cultures.Out of this environment came not only linguists and diplomats, but also a major school of 19th-century Orientalism. Civil servants and scholars alike, these men were unshakably loyal to European institutional and intellectual values and the house of Habsburg, though not every one of its ministers. They also were committed to understanding Ottoman and Muslim behavior on non-Western terms.For Western political leaders today, facing the possibility of armed engagements with Islamic extremists yet hoping to avoid stigmatizing every Muslim in their midst, the old Habsburg monarchy has left behind some very sound suggestions:Keep public triumphalism within decent limits, even when hostilities end. The more one knows of an opponent, the less likely one will slip when negotiating with him. If a government must go to war, it is more likely to prevail when it acts on the basis of sound information rather than simplistic propaganda playbooks.Human curiosity about the “Other” is to be encouraged; it often nurtures alternative views of an enemy that are very productive once peace is made. And academics who can find admirable features both in alien cultures and their own can be good sources of advice on dealing with the “Other.” Lastly, and perhaps most simply, trade and commerce can persuade otherwise hostile people that they need one another, regardless of what culture they come from.The recent research of Saumitra Jha, who is soon to join the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, shows that Muslim and Hindu merchants co-operated cordially for centuries when trading in the ports of India. Long after these towns ceased to be major commercial posts, their multiethnic populations lived together more harmoniously than in other regions of the subcontinent.One would have to be very bigoted indeed not to see that New Yorkers, and the modern Viennese themselves, routinely put aside ethnic and religious prejudices or forget them altogether when exchanging goods and services.Ms. Fichtner is professor emerita of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her book “Terror and Toleration: The Habsburg Empire Confronts Islam 1526-1850” (Reaktion Books, 2008) recently has been released.

The Austrian Model

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