Category Archives: Italy

European far-right parties team up against Islam and Brussels

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Six European far-right parties joined forces Thursday to combat immigration and European bureaucracy ahead of 2014 elections, French newspaper Liberation reported.

The parties, which include France’s Front National, are teaming up against two common enemies: Brussels and Islam, the newspaper said. The Netherlands’ PVV, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, Italy’s Liga Norte, Swedish democrats and Austria’s Freedom Party met at a hotel in Vienna to discuss the outlines of their collaboration.

The meeting happened in secret so as not to attract the attention of possible demonstrators, the paper said, and to be able to devote their time to strategizing about the future of the far-right in Europe.

But Andreas Mölzer, the organizer of the meeting and an Austrian member of the European Parliament, confirmed the meeting took place. “The points that unite us are more important than those that separate us,” he told Liberation.

The National Front declined to comment for this story.

Vlaams Belang’s Filip Claeys told Flemish newspaper De Morgen he would join the meeting the next day. “We are going to define a number of themes tomorrow to go to voters together,” Claeys said. “Think migration and the extension of the European Union.”

The politicians aim to form a political party in the European Parliament, the newspaper reported, for which they need 25 representatives from seven countries. They also wish to draw up a common list of issues to address in parliament, as well as smooth over their differences from the past.

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Wilders to build further links with European far right

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration PVV, is hoping to work together with Swedish and Italian nationalist parties as well as Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and the Front National in France, Nos television reports.

Wilders, who has made no secret of his contacts with the Belgian and French nationalists, told Nos he has now had contact with the Eurosceptic Sweden Democrats and will also meet officials from the Lega Nord in Italy.

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Magdi Allam quits Catholic Church

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Magdi Allam baptisedMagdi Cristiano Allam, an Egyptian-born Muslim whom Pope Benedict publicly baptised at Easter five years ago in St Peter’s Basilica has announced that he is leaving the Church because it has taken too soft a stand against Islam.

“My conversion to Catholicism, which came at the hands of Benedict XVI during the Easter Vigil on 22 March 2008, I now consider finished in combination with the end of his pontificate,” Mr Allam wrote on Monday in the right-wing Milan daily, Il Giornale.

The 61-year-old journalist and right-wing politician has long been an Italian citizen. He said he had pondered his decision to leave the Church for some time. However, he affirmed that the “last straw” was the election of Pope Francis, which he said was proof that the Church is “troppo buonista” – excessively tolerant.

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Pig’s head found in Islamic prayer centre in Milan

Posted on by Bob Pitt

PalaSharp ArenaA pig’s head was found on Friday at the PalaSharp Arena in Milan where the local Islamic community holds weekly prayers. The head was found by delegates of the civil protection agency in an area close to where ceremonies are held every Friday.

PalaSharp is an indoor arena, located in the northern Italian city of Milan. It has a seating capacity of almost 9,000 and is also used for concerts and sporting events.

Local authorities have vigorously condemned the incident. Vice-Mayor Maria Grazia Guida called it “intolerable”. “It is light years away from this city of dialogue, of tolerance we are building,” she said. The matter is being closely followed by police.

ANSA, 23 November 2012

See also La Repubblica, 23 November 2012

Time Magazine on the Italian veil ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The thing about Italy’s proposed law to ban women from wearing veils that cover their faces is that it’s not clear what difference it would make.

Just like in France or Belgium, which have introduced similar measures, Italy does not have a large population of women who wear the burqa or the niqab, which cover almost the entire body and face. “In my 20 years in Italy, I don’t think I’ve seen ten women who wear the veil,” says Izzeddin Elzir, head of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII), the country’s largest Muslim organization. According to Elzir, most Muslims in Italy subscribe to a school of Islam that doesn’t require women to keep their faces covered. “In summer, there are more, because there are lots of tourists [from Arabic countries],” he says. “But here in Italy, we see few cases.”

The legislation, which was approved by a parliamentary commission on Tuesday, occupies a strange place in the Italian political spectrum, uniting the socially liberal left with the xenophobic right. (A similar measure was floated by the previous left-wing government.) If approved by parliament, it would close a religious exemption to previous legislation that prohibits anybody in Italy from donning garb that would make their identification impossible. The proposed law has the support of the Northern League, a populist political party that has built its electoral success by fanning fears in a country being changed rapidly by immigration.

The effort to ban the burqa has the support of human-rights groups, like the EveryOne Group, which campaigns for the protection of minorities. “The reason [the burqa] is worn is to hide the woman, to limit her expression,” says the activist group’s president Roberto Malini. But he acknowledges that on this matter, the group finds itself in strange accordance with the Northern League, which has sponsored similar legislation on the local level, including one in the city of Bergamo, where kebab shops were recently banned from the historic city center. “Everything they do is to seed the fear of Islam,” says Malini.

For Elzir of UCOII, to reject the bill is to stand for religious freedom – a devout woman should be free to cover herself if she wants. He adds that those women who are being forced to don a burqa by their husbands risk being confined to their homes if the proposal is made law. “We say we are for the liberty of all,” says Elzir. “If there’s a woman who is obliged to [wear the veil], let’s work together to help get her out of this situation. Let’s not make a law against her.” He believes the bill is more about politics than policy, a distraction from the bigger issues. “Our parliament should focus on issues that impact all citizens, not just one or two people,” he says. “The citizens of Italy need an answer to this economic crisis. And instead our parliament is studying whether our Islamic women should be covered or not.”

Time, 5 August 2011

Italy: parliamentary committee approves veil ban bill

Posted on by Bob Pitt

An Italian parliamentary committee has passed a draft law which will ban women from wearing veils which cover their faces in public.

The bill, which has the backing of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s central-right coalition, would prohibit the wearing of a burka, niqab or any headwear which covers the face. The bill will go to a parliamentary vote after the summer recess.

Belgium and France have already banned the full-face veil in public.

If passed, those who defied the ban would face a fine of 150-300 euros ($213-426; £130-260) and some kind of community service, according to Ansa news agency. For those who forced someone else to wear the covering, the penalty would be 30,000 euros and up to 12 months in jail, Ansa reports.

Lawmaker Barbara Saltamartini, from Mr Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, said she welcomed the move. “Final approval will put an end to the suffering of many women who are often forced to wear the burka or niqab, which annihilates their dignity and gets in the way of integration,” Ms Saltamartini said in a statement.

The opposition voted against the move.

BBC News, 2 August 2011

See also Daily Mail, 2 August 2011

Berlusconi accuses opposition of wanting to turn Milan into an Islamic city

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Berlusconi 3Less than a week ahead of a run-off vote in a bitterly contested mayoral race in Milan, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Monday accused the opposition centre-left of wanting to turn the northern Italian city “Islamic”, overrun by Roma and foreigners.

“Milan … cannot become, at the eve of the Expo 2015, an Islamic city, a city of gypsies, full of Roma camps and besieged by foreigners to whom (the left) wants to give voting rights,” Berlusconi said. The premier’s remarks were contained in a message posted on the online site of his People of Freedom (PDL) party.

Berlusconi appealed to voters to choose Milan’s outgoing Mayor Letizia Moratti instead of the centre-left’s candidate Giuliano Pisapia – who the premier has branded an leftist extremist – in run-offs scheduled for May 28-29.

Appearing confident of victory, earlier this month Berlusconi had said that Italy’s local elections were a test of his government’s popularity two years before its mandate is due to end. However, last week in a surprise first-round result in Milan, Pisapia a former Communist forced Moratti into a run-off after capturing some 48 per cent of the vote compared to her 42 per cent.

Milan has been a stronghold for the centre-right for almost two-decades and the city is currently governed by a coalition between the PDL and the federalist and anti-immigration Northern League – a party which is also Berlusconi’s junior partner in the national government.

Moratti, a former national education minister from the PDL, says she opposes the construction of a mosque in Milan as requested by the city’s mostly migrant Muslim community. A mosque in Italy’s financial capital would “create a centre of attraction for Islamic groups from all over Italy who then would not be controllable,” Moratti said.

But Pisapia has criticised Moratti’s stance, saying that the city should cater for its Muslim community whose members are currently forced to pray in “informal” venues such as schools and garages.

DPA, 23 May 2011

Prejudice against Muslims is general across Europe, report finds

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Via Islam in Europe here is the section on anti-Muslim prejudice from the new Friedrich Ebert Foundation publication, Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination: A European Report (summary of the study here).

Anti-Muslim Attitudes

After statistical testing, three statements were used to produce the anti-Muslim attitudes mean scale (Table 7, items 18 to 20). These cover the general impression that there are too many Muslims in the country, the charge that Muslims make too many demands, and broad-brush criticism of Islam as a religion of intolerance. Four further statements were surveyed in a random half of the sample. These cover a positive attitude that sees Muslims as an enrichment and the idea that there are great cultural differences between the majority society and Muslims, especially concerning attitudes towards women. We also surveyed the idea that Muslims generally support and condone terrorism.

In most of the countries a majority believe Islam to be a religion of intolerance, with agreement just below 50 percent only in Great Britain and the Netherlands. In almost all the countries more than half of respondents said that Muslims make too many demands; Portugal was the only exception with about one third. The statement that there are too many Muslims in the country is affirmed by just over one quarter in Portugal and by about one third in France. In Germany, Great Britain, Italy and the Netherlands more than 40 percent of respondents complain that there are too many Muslims in their country, in Hungary about 60 percent.

Interviewees were also asked to respond to four further statements covering perceived cultural differences and supposed affinity of Muslims toward terrorism (Table 7, items 22 to 25). Despite correlating closely with anti-Muslim attitudes these items represent separate constructs and were therefore excluded from the scale measure.

FES1

The figures for those who say that Muslim culture is compatible with their own range from 17 percent in Poland and 19 percent in Germany to about half the population in Portugal and France. A majority of more than 70 percent of European respondents find that Muslim attitudes towards women are incompatible with their own values. Overall in the surveyed countries about one third think that Muslims treat Islamist terrorists as heroes, although somewhat fewer believe that terrorism finds moral support in the Muslim community (ranging from under 20 percent in Germany and the Netherlands to nearly 30 percent in Hungary).

The scale created from the first three statements clearly illustrates the extent of anti-Muslim attitudes in the studied countries (Figure 5). It is conspicuous that Europeans are largely united in their rejection of Muslims and Islam. The significantly most widespread anti-Muslim attitudes are found in Germany, Hungary, Italy and Poland, closely followed by France, Great Britain and the Netherlands. The extent of anti-Muslim attitudes is least in Portugal. In absolute terms, however, the eight countries differ little in their levels of prejudice towards Muslims.

FES2

Update:  See comments by ENGAGE, 16 March 2011

Italian town adopts Lega Nord proposal to ban veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Lega Nord posterA small town in Italy has banned women from wearing burqas and face veils, making it the first time such a law has been passed in the country. Sesto San Giovanni, a small town on the edge of Milan, has made national headlines after it decided to ban women from wearing burqas.

Chabani Ibrahim of the town’s Islamic Center says he has no idea why the local authorities decided to agree to the ban. “We have real concerns about the position of this motion in the town council’s priorities as there are a lot of other problems that need solving in this town,” he told Press TV.

“There are only a handful of women who wear burqa and you hardly ever see them on streets. At the same time, there are nearly 6,000 Muslims who don’t have a descent place to practice their faith on a daily basis,” he added.

The idea was originally proposed by a female councillor from the far-right Northern League Party. Alessandra Tabacco argued that there is a law in Italy that says people should identify themselves since it is an issue of security.

Those most affected by the decision feel that it is an unfair and unnecessary attack on their freedom of expression. “It is our religion. Everyone should respect it in the same way that we are respecting other people’s faiths,” a Muslim woman said.

Press TV, 3 February 2011

Turin: official calls for veil-wearing mothers to be banned from picking up their children from school

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A government official in industrial northern Italian city of Turin has asked the local school board to stop fully-veiled women from picking up their children at school because it makes it difficult to identify them as the students’ true parents.

The request by Maurizio Marrone – a member of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative People of Liberty party – was prompted after Marrone and other mothers had seen some women dressed in full burqas picking up their children from an elementary school in Turin’s Barriera di Milano working class neighbourhood.

“Some mothers with children enrolled in the Albert Sabin elementary school in Turin have seen Islamic women wearing the full burqa picking up their children, and I have seen this as well,” Marrone said, adding that the burqa made it impossible for teachers to “verify the identity” of those picking up minors.

Marrone went on to call the wearing of the burqa, the traditional dress of fundamentalist Islamic women, “damaging to the dignity of women.” Marrone also claims the burqa “slows down the process of integration” for immigrants.

AKI, 24 November 2010