Prime Minister, Robert Fico vowed not accept “one single Muslim” refugee into the country

Elham Asaad Buaras

The Slovakian Parliament adopted legislation on November 28 to effectively bar Islam from gaining official status as a religion.

The Slovak National Party (SNS), which is in coalition with the leftist-nationalist Smer-Social Democracy (SMD) party, sponsored the bill which requires a religion to have at least 50,000 members, up from 20,000, to qualify for state subsidies and to run its own schools. The change will make it harder to register Islam as there are only 2,000 Muslims in Slovakia according to the last census and no recognised mosques.

Weeks before Slovakia took over the presidency of the Council of the European Union in May, Prime Minister, Robert Fico, who has fiercely opposed EU quotas on migrant resettlement from Greece and Italy, vowed not accept “one single Muslim” refugee into the country .

Fico told Slovakian news agency TASR: “When I say something now, maybe it will seem strange, but I’m sorry, Islam has no place in Slovakia. I think it is the duty of politicians to talk about these things very clearly and openly. I do not wish there were tens of thousands of Muslims.”

SNS Chair Andrej Danko who also called for steps to niqab ban and the construction of mosques said, “Islamisation starts with a kebab and it’s already under way in Bratislava. Let’s realise what we can face in five to 10 years. We must do everything we can so that no mosque is built in the future”. There was no immediate comment from the Islamic Foundation of Slovakia.

The law was approved by a two-thirds majority in parliament comprising both ruling and opposition parties. Lawmakers turned down a proposal by the opposition far-right People’s Party-Our Slovakia to raise the religion membership bar to 250,000.