Yannick Shetty Calls for a “Perverse Approach” to Women’s Integration

Yannick Shetty says he was shocked that Derad, an organization tasked with deradicalizing jihadists, is now suspected of having been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Austria’s Justice Ministry and Education Ministry have ended their cooperation with the group after intelligence findings prompted authorities to act.

Shetty, who leads the Neos parliamentary group, said he had not seen the intelligence material and should not have access to it simply because he is a parliamentarian. He rejected the suggestion that the decision could be driven by party politics, saying public authorities had a responsibility to respond when the findings were serious enough. Since 2019, 1.3 million euros had flowed to Derad.

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I am not the advocate of the ÖVP interior minister or the SPÖ justice minister.

He acknowledged that authorities had apparently failed to scrutinize the organization closely enough for a period. At the same time, he said it was positive that someone had eventually examined the issue carefully and that the intelligence services had acted after years of dysfunction.

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The culture war in the classroom does not arise through a law, it has been there for a long time and is a reality.

Shetty also addressed the headscarf ban due to take effect on Monday, amid reports of calls for a boycott from teachers. He said many teachers feared they would have to fight a proxy war in classrooms, but argued that conflicts involving so-called morality police and boys refusing to follow rules or speak with female teachers already existed. In his view, the “culture war in the classroom” did not begin with the law.

He called a school strike promoted by the Social Democratic youth organization nearly cynical, pointing to women in Iran who have protested for years against compulsory veiling. Still, he described the issue as morally and philosophically difficult. A clothing rule interferes with a fundamental right, he said, but the question was whether that interference was proportionate. He argued that circumstances had changed since 10 years ago, when headscarves among children under 14 represented a negligible problem. Shetty also called for an integration map and urged ÖVP politician Claudia Bauer to deliver on the integration obligation, which he said could help thousands of women from Syria and Afghanistan who still do not work after years in Austria.

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The strike seems almost cynical to me.