Category Archives: Italy

Italian politician parades pig on mosque site

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Italy’s former deputy education minister has provoked a scandal by parading a pig, an impure animal for Muslims, on the site of a planned mosque in the country’s north, news reports said Sunday.

“We have ‘blessed’ the ground that the Padua authorities want to transfer for the mosque,” said Mariella Mazzetto, a member of the populist right-wing Northern League party in the city. She walked the pig on a lead accompanied by about 10 party members, Italian daily newspapers reported.

“It’s a question of defending Italian identity,” said Mazzetto, who was deputy education minister in 1994-95 under the former right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi.

AFP, 12 November 2007

Italy: eighth mosque attacked in Lombardy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A mosque in a small town outside Milan has been the target of a violent attack – the eighth on mosques in the region of Lombardy surrounding the city.

Italian media reports said the Alif Baa Islamic Centre, in the northern Italian city of Abbiategrasso, 20 kilometres west of Milan, was subjected to fresh violence on Wednesday. Witnesses said a masked man was seen throwing a Molotov cocktail inside the courtyard of the mosque from his motorcycle in the late afternoon. No major damage or injuries were reported in the attack.

This is the eighth assault against Islamic centres in the region of Lombardy in recent months. The Alif Baa Islamic Centre reported other attacks on 25 July and 10 August this year. Another mosque in the nearby city of Segrate was attacked on 5 August and the car of the Imam, Hamid Zariate, was destroyed.

AKI, 25 October 2007

Campaigns for ban on mosques across Europe

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pro Koln demoFrom London’s docklands to the rolling hills of Tuscany, from southern Austria to Amsterdam and Cologne, the issue of Islamic architecture and its impact on citadels of “western civilisation” is increasingly contentious.

The far right is making capital from Islamophobia by focusing on the visible symbols of Islam in Europe. In Switzerland it is the far-right SVP that is setting the terms of the debate.

Next door in Austria the far right leader Jörg Haider is also calling for a ban in his province of Carinthia, even though there are few Muslims and no known plans for mosques. “Carinthia,” he said, “will be a pioneer in the battle against radical Islam for the protection of our dominant western culture.”

In Italy the mayors of Bologna and Genoa last month cancelled or delayed planning permission for mosques after a vociferous campaign by the far-right Northern League, one of whose leaders, Roberto Calderoli, threatened to stage a “day of pork” to offend Muslims and to take pigs to “defile” the site of the proposed mosque in Bologna.

While the far right makes the running, their noisy campaign is being supported more quietly by mainstream politicians and some Christian leaders. And on the left pro-secularist and anti-clericalist sentiment is also frequently ambivalent about Islamic building projects.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne has voiced his unease over a large new mosque being built for the city’s 120,000 Muslims in the Rhineland Roman Catholic stronghold. A similar scheme in Munich has also faced local protests.

The Bishop of Graz in Austria has been more emphatic. “Muslims should not build mosques which dominate town’s skylines in countries like ours,” said Bishop Egon Kapellari.

Guardian, 11 October 2007

‘Burqa’ allowed in Italy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rome, October 9 – The decision by a northern Italian city official to allow Muslim women to wear the burqa has sparked consternation in the country, even though at least one minister supported the move. “We have already said several times, and we reiterate it now, that the use of the burqa is unacceptable,” said a spokesman for Interior Minister Giulio Amato.

A 1975 law, introduced amid concern over homegrown terrorism in the country’s cities, forbids Italians from appearing in public wearing anything which covers their faces. Apart from this law, which appears to apply to the burqa, many politicians on both sides of parliament said the garment was also a humiliating imposition. “I am indignant. Covering up women’s faces is an offence to their dignity,” said Equal Opportunities Minister Barbara Pollastrini.

Vittorio Capocelli, the prefect of Treviso in the Veneto region, decided on October 5 that it was acceptable for Muslim women in the city to wear the garment as long as they were ready to remove it and identify themselves to police when required. A day later Family Minister Rosy Bindi, a prominent Catholic politician, indicated her agreement, saying that it was right to be “respectful of the veil” as long as women wore it of their own free will.

The apparent green light for the burqa drew a stinging editorial from Egyptian-born writer and journalist Magdi Allam in Tuesday’s edition of Corriere della Sera, Italy’s best-selling daily. “If the prefect’s decision sets a legal and administrative precedent on a national level, Islamic women could soon be going to school completely covered, be getting hired in workplaces and circulating freely all over Italy,” he wrote.

Muslim News, 10 October 2007

Now Italy considers banning the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Italy today became the latest European government to announce it was considering introducing a law which would make wearing a burqa illegal. MPs from the anti-immigration Northern League party, a member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling right wing coalition, have presented the proposal in a bill. It comes just weeks after France also said that it was considering making the wearing of burqas by Muslim women illegal.

Daily Mail, 7 October 2009

Calderoli outrages Italy’s Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Roberto CalderoliA far-right Italian senator outraged Muslims on Thursday by calling for a “Pig Day” protest against the planned construction of a mosque in northern Italy.

Roberto Calderoli of the anti-immigrant Northern League party said he was ready to bring his own pig to “defile” the site where the mosque is due to be built in the northern city of Bologna.

“I am making myself and my pig available for a walk at the site where they want to build the mosque,” Calderoli, who is a deputy speaker of Italy’s Senate, said in a statement. Calderoli also said he would eat “a nice plateful of pork chops to show my lack of sympathy for those who consider pork forbidden meat.”

Reuters, 13 September 2007

See also Catholic World News, which quotes condemnation of Calderoli’s comments by Italy’s welfare minister, Paolo Ferrero of the Communist Refoundation Party. “I apologize to Muslims living in Italy on behalf of all civilized Italians,” Ferrero said.

Police arrest two far-right Belgian leaders at anti-Islam 9/11 protest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Stop IslamisationBRUSSELS, Belgium: Police arrested two leaders of a Belgian far-right party Tuesday for staging an illegal protest against the “Islamization of Europe,” six years to the day after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Police scuffled with some of the 200 people who converged on two squares in the EU district of Brussels to protest against what they perceived as the rise of Islam as a significant political force across Europe. Officers handcuffed two leaders of the far-right Flemish Interest Party, which is very critical of Muslim immigrants, and took them away in police vans.

The Italian Foreign Ministry said it was protesting the detention of an Italian member of the European Parliament, Mario Borghezio, who attended the demonstration. Borghezio is from the Northern League, an Italian regional party with an anti-immigrant stance. Italian state TV showed footage of Borghezio yelling as police were taking him away that he is a member of the European Parliament. He was later released.

Protesters sought to use the Sept. 11 anniversary to point out that Islam threatens democracy and the rule of law in Europe. The demonstration was initially planned by Stop Islamization of Europe, a loose alliance with roots in Germany, Britain and Denmark, which had predicted that 20,000 people would come to Brussels from all over Europe. Brussels Mayor Freddy Thielemans banned the protest last month, calling SIOE an inflammatory group and its proposed demonstration a threat to public order. An appeals court upheld the ban Aug. 29.

Only 200 or so protesters showed up Tuesday for a protest lasting only 30 minutes. The demonstrators faced more than 100 police, backed up by water cannons and helicopters, who closed off streets around the EU headquarters.

“We support the goals of the demonstration to protest against the lack of freedom of expression in this country,” said Frank Vanhecke, the head of the Flemish Interest Party, before he was bundled off to the police station. “And we also we fully agree that the rise of Islam in Europe poses a risk to our values.”

Associated Press, 11 September 2007

The British National Party declares its solidarity with its far-right co-thinkers in Brussels, and warns: “Europe looks set for more of these kinds of protests as decent European patriots become more and more frustrated and angered by the endless appeasement by liberal-leftists in positions of power and influence.”

BNP news article, 11 September 2007

The case against banning the Koran – according to D. Pipes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Daniel Pipes rejects calls by Geert Wilders, Roberto Calderoli et al for a ban on the Qur’an and/or Islam. Can’t see that going down too well with some of his admirers. But fear not, Daniel hasn’t succumbed to the disease of liberal appeasement. He writes: “More practical and focused would be to reduce the threats of jihad and Shari’a by banning Islamist interpretations of the Koran, as well as Islamism and Islamists.”

Jerusalem Post, 28 August 2007

Update:  See “US Islamophobes fall out”, Islamophobia Watch, 29 August 2007

European mosque plans face protests

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Petitions in London, protests in Cologne, a court case in Marseille and a violent clash in Berlin – Muslims in Europe are meeting resistance to plans for mosques that befit Islam’s status as the continent’s second religion.

Across Europe, Muslims who have long prayed in garages and old factories now face skepticism and concern for wanting to build stately mosques to give proud testimony to the faith and solidity of their Islamic communities.

Some critics reject them as signs of “Islamisation”. Others say minarets would scar their city’s skyline. Given the role some mosques have played as centers for terrorists, others see Muslim houses of worship as potential security threats.

“The increasingly visible presence of Muslims has prompted questions in all European societies,” Tariq Ramadan, one of Europe’s leading Muslim spokesmen, argued when far-right groups proposed this year to ban minarets in his native Switzerland.

The issue hit the headlines in Britain in late July when a petition against a “mega-mosque” next to the 2012 London Olympics site was posted on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Web site. It attracted more than 275,000 signatures before it was taken down.

In Germany last month, there were anti-mosque protests in Cologne and Berlin and a local council voted against one in Munich. A French far-right group vowed to sue the city of Marseille for a second time for helping build a “grand mosque”.

Bekir Alboga of the Turkish Islamic Union (DITIB) in Cologne said critics who see these new mosques as signs of separatism or of an Islamic colonization of Europe miss the point.

“The desire of Muslims to build a house of worship means they want to feel at home and live in harmony with their religion in a society they have accepted as theirs,” he said.

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