ITALY: Italy may soon have a new law effectively blocking the construction of new mosques in much of the country

Record ID: 743724

  • Title: ITALY: Italy may soon have a new law effectively blocking the construction of new mosques in much of the country
  • Date: 17th September 2008
  • Summary: (MER-1) ROME, ITALY (RECENT) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PRAYERS WOMAN LOOKING ON FROM BALCONY MUSLIMS PRAYING IN ROME MOSQUE
  • Embargoed: 2nd October 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Italy
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: Domestic Politics,Religion
  • Reuters ID: LVA2PR3UMGKV7498JQ296RXHLL3X
  • Story Text: Muslims mark the fasting holy month of Ramadan in Italy as they do in every corner of the world, by fasting and saying their prayers.
    In Italy however, where Islam is considered the second largest faith, there is growing concern amongst the Muslim community that their cultural conditions could be under threat.
    If the anti-immigrant Northern League gets its way -- and as a partner of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, it will -- Italy will soon have a new law effectively blocking the construction of new mosques in much of the country.
    A conduit for illegal immigrants into Europe, thanks to its long Mediterranean coastline, Italy is more wary of racial and cultural diversity than many of its European peers, which may explain the League's success in this year's elections.
    The League runs many town halls in the prosperous north, the homeland it calls "Padania," which is also home to a majority of Italy's immigrants and of its more than 1 million Muslims.
    Estimating that permission for a new mosque or prayer hall is granted somewhere in the country every four days, the bill's author, League parliamentarian Andrea Gibelli, believes this to be a colonisation of the Italian culture.
    As a senior deputy in Italy's lower house, he has done his homework on Islam, quoting from the Koran in Arabic. He argues that mosques discourage Muslims from integrating and in some cases provide a front for extreme forms of Islam.
    "Experience shows that mosques are often places of cultural indoctrination , sometimes linked to phenomenons connected to international terrorism, and they create a climate which is typical of Islamic culture which is to create a community within the community," Gibelli said.
    "Muslims are unlikely to integrate and the mosque becomes a place to legitimise different cultural and social behaviour that has little in common with our country's heritage," he added.
    His argument that the Koran says "Muslims can pray anywhere"
    so do not need more mosques is echoed by the League's right-wing allies in Berlusconi's government to justify preventing Milan's Muslims from having their own mosque.
    They have been shunted from a makeshift mosque on a pavement outside a converted garage to a velodrome, inspiring Islamist parliamentarians in Egypt to demand sanctions against Italy.
    "Without a doubt, there are a number of parties, especially the Northern League, which is doing all it can to close most mosques in Italy and places where Muslims congregate in Italy. But without doubt, this does not mean that these places will close automatically. We are doing all we can to find other places for prayer which can accommodate many Muslims," said the president of the Islamic Cultural Institute of Milan, Abdel Hamid Sha'ari.
    The League bill would ban mosques from being built within a kilometre of a church, oblige clerics to speak Italian, link the size of the mosque to the number of the congregation and forbid Muezzins (the criers who call the faithful to prayer five times a day) from using loudspeakers.
    The bill will certainly not make recent or illegal immigrants feel any more welcome in the country. Even established Muslim residents like Jihad Amro, say they still cannot call Italy home.
    "I have paid taxes for 17 years but I still don't feel at home," Amro, a Palestinian, said.
    "There are still situations where I feel uncomfortable or strange" said Amro to Reuters Television.
    Apart from banning minarets, crucially the bill will give the final word to local residents via a referendum on whether mosques should be built, which would effectively mean no new mosques in League-dominated areas of the north.
    "Nobody wants to build a mosque or open a prayer hall near a Catholic Church," responds the head of the Muslim World League in Italy, Mario Scialoja, a former Italian ambassador to Saudi Arabia who converted to Islam two decades ago.
    "Mosques should be located in areas where Muslims live and where they don't provoke or create problems for the surrounding Italian population," he said.
    In the Italian Capital muslims are lucky to be able to pray in one of southern Europe's largest mosques -- some 3 kilometres from the Vatican. But so far obstruction on the building of mosques has echoed across Italy, with requests for mosques' blocked in Venice, Bologna, Trento and Treviso, among others.
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