Governing Islam in Austria and Germany

Abstract This book is an in-depth study of how Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Hercegovina and the German Kaiserreich’s rule in Tanzania, Togo, and Cameroon in respect to its Muslim subjects shows continuities and ruptures with the Nazi Reich’s incorporation of Muslims in its polity as well as contemporary Islam policies or Islampolitik in postwar Austria and Germany. It studies the institutionalization of Muslim representative bodies and Islamic education from the late 1870s until the early 2020s. The book introduces the theory of the coloniality of Islam policies or Islampolitik, which describes how the state regulates and governs its Muslim population. It presents the argument that the experience and knowledge in governing Muslim populations acquired by colonial governors during the Age of Empire (1875–1914) by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the German Kaiserreich fundamentally informed Islampolitik during the Nazi regime and in postwar Europe. The coloniality of Islampolitik is a form of racialized politics, as it aims to regulate and govern a racialized version of Islam and Muslims.