Does this headline make sense?
Well — at least as much as the term “political Islam.” A term that ultimately criticizes nothing more than the fact that Islam — unlike Christianity — actually has Commandments.

And no: the Ten Commandments are not the Commandments of Christians, given that the first four are openly ignored by trinitarian polytheists. Fear of God, keeping the Sabbath holy, the absolute denial that an earthly being like Jesus is divine? None of that applies.

Is it not absurd to expect someone who fears God to downplay and ignore His commandments?
Does fear automatically turn a believer into a radical?

If even a sack of rice falling over in China is supposed to be part of political Islam, is it then absurd to claim that femicide is part of the “sharia” of the witch burners, of political Christianity? Image: Still from Fritz Lang’s cult film “Metropolis”

Two femicides in Austria within a few days. Two women dead. Two men from their closest environment as suspects. And yet: no major debate about values, no religious general suspicion, no buzzword meant to suddenly explain everything. No talk shows, no special broadcasts, no editorials about a “Christian problem.”

Because while every violent crime committed by a sunni or shiite suspect reflexively triggers the term “political Islam”, the question is conspicuously absent this time:

Is this violence rooted in the spirit of political Christianity?

Of course not — people will say.
And that is precisely where the double standard lies.

Witches, Whores, Property

For centuries, women in Europe were burned, tortured, drowned — legitimized by church, pulpit, and state. Witch hunts were not a historical accident but a system: women who did not obey, did not conform, could not be controlled.

The female body was suspect.
Female autonomy a threat.
Violence morally justified.

No pyres burn today.
Today women suffocate in bedrooms, are buried, hidden, disposed of.

The underlying idea remains the same:
She belongs to me. I decide.

Two Crimes, Two Patterns — One Silence

In the first case, a 34-year-old woman from Styria disappeared; her body was later found in a wooded area. The main suspect is a 30-year-old officer of the elite police unit Cobra — precisely someone who sees himself as a moral authority, an inquisitor. According to investigators, there was personal contact between suspect and victim. Authorities are investigating the killing as intentional.

No extremist network.
No religious radicalization.
No imported worldview.

Just power, control — and a dead woman.

In the second case in Lower Austria, a 47-year-old man is suspected of killing his 36-year-old partner. According to police, he confessed to an acquaintance that he strangled her and hid her body in a cellar. Again: a relationship, a private space, a man deciding that a woman no longer gets to live.

Again, no religious buzzword.
No cultural alarmism.
No political narrative.

Why Is It Never Called “Political Christianity”?

When a man kills, it is labeled a “relationship drama,” “jealousy,” a “psychological exceptional situation.”
Even when the suspect belongs to an armed elite unit of the state.

Never is there talk of the cultural DNA that taught men for centuries that women are property — a doctrine deeply rooted in European Christian patriarchy.

Imagine one of the perpetrators had prayed loudly.
Imagine he had justified himself religiously.
Imagine he had a muslim name.

The terms would have been ready at hand.

Selective Morality Is Not Enlightenment

No — these femicides were not “caused by Christianity.”
But violence is just as little automatically explained by Islam simply because perpetrators are sunni or shiite — not even Muslims.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Femicide is not an imported problem.
It is a European problem of continuity.

And perhaps the debate would be more honest if — instead of obsessing over “political Islam” — we dared to ask:

Which patriarchal patterns have we never broken?
And why do we prefer talking about headscarves while women die in our own country?

Whoever possesses authority more easily believes they are in the right.

When a man trained professionally to exercise dominance transfers this logic into the private sphere, intimacy becomes a power relationship. A relationship becomes territory. Conflict becomes transgression.

Just as the priest once decided a woman was “corrupt,” today the officer decides she resisted. Wanted to leave. Withdrew.

And violence follows — again.

Not Religion, but the Pattern

Neither the inquisitor of the past nor today’s elite officer is an anomaly. They are products of systems that sanctify male authority — once religiously, now stately. Both systems can protect. Both can kill when control becomes self-evident and dissent is perceived as provocation.

That is precisely why it is so convenient to speak of “political Islam.”
Because dominance can be externalized, exoticized, devalued.

Here, however, one would have to admit that Europe’s own history of persecuting women has not been overcome — only secularized.

The pyres are gone.
The logic of control over women’s lives is not.

By Okay Altinisik | 16-1-2026, 00:47:18