Governing Islam in Austria and Germany, with Farid Hafez

October 16, 2026

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5 min read

Farid Hafez’s recent book, Governing Islam in Austria and Germany: From Colonial Times to the Present, began as a 1.2 million euro ERC research proposal that was rejected because one reviewer asserted that “Austria never had a colony.” That dismissal—itself a symptom of the colonial amnesia Hafez investigates—prompted him to narrow the project to two states and write the book himself. The result is a detailed historical argument: the way Austria and Germany govern Muslim communities today is not a post-9/11 or post-Cold War invention but a direct continuation of racialized techniques developed during the high imperial era of the 1880s.

The Coloniality of Islampolitik

Hafez, a political scientist, frames his analysis around what he calls the “coloniality of Islampolitik”—a concept borrowed from the German and Austro-Hungarian colonial administrators themselves, who used the term Islampolitik to describe their management of Muslim subjects. The core mechanism is racialized inclusion and exclusion. Hafez argues that this governance does not simply target Muslims as “bad”; it also works by identifying and elevating “good” Muslims who can be co-opted.

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What you'll learn

1 (02:53) **Book Origin & Research Scope** - Farid Hafez explains how his book *Governing Islam in Austria and Germany* began as a failed ERC grant proposal, rejected because one reviewer claimed "Austria never had a colony."
2 (09:56) **Colonial Amnesia in Austria and Germany** - Hafez discusses how both nations erase their colonial pasts, with Austria particularly denying it ever had colonies.
3 (12:19) **Coloniality of Islampolitik** - Hafez introduces his core theoretical concept, drawing on Walter Mignolo's work to explain how race enables the constant inclusion and exclusion of Muslims.
4 (18:20) **Racialized Fluidity: The Bosnian Case** - Hafez demonstrates how Bosnian Muslims were reclassified from "oriental race" to "white" European aristocracy when they collaborated with Austro-Hungarian colonial rule.
5 (22:07) **Racialized Fluidity: The German African Case** - In German East Africa, coastal Arab Muslims were the "bad Arabs" while inland Black Muslims were "half-Muslims" with a peaceful "Islam noir."
6 (24:02) **Contemporary Continuities in Austria and Germany** - The same racialized logic appears today in institutions like Austria's Islamic Religious Authority and Germany's Islam Conference.
7 (25:36) **Islamophobic Populism Defined** - Hafez explains his PhD-era concept, developed through critical discourse analysis of Austrian parliamentary debates on mosque and minaret bans.

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Show Notes

In this episode, hosts Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas were joined by Farid Hafez to discuss his most recently published book Governing Islam in Austria and Germany: From Colonial Times to the Present (Oxford UP, 2026). Hafez’s recent work centres on the comparative analysis of the Austro-Hungarian rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the German rule in Tanzania, Togo and Cameroon, and in particular their respective treatment of Muslims in each case to then in turn shed light on the current governing of Muslimness in both. Farid Hafez is an assistant professor in International Relations at William and Mary, and also a senior researcher at Georgetown University.

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