Massimo D'Alema
Massimo D’Alema’s suggestion that state money should be used to build mosques in Italy has stirred up a predictable storm of protests. Matteo Salvini, leader of the Northern League tweeted, “Is he mad?”
In a radio interview former prime minister D’Alema argued that part of the ”8 per mille” should go to Muslim organisations to construct places of worship. The “8 per thousand” is that 0.8% of income tax that Italian tax payers can choose to give to an organised religion or the state. Until 2010, in addition to Catholicism, the recognised religions were Methodist and Waldensians, Seventh-Day Adventists, the Evangelical Christian Churches, the Lutheran Church, the Baptist Union and the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. In 2010, the Apostolic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church and the Buddhist and Hindu Unions joined the list. The Mormon church and Jehova’s Witnesses were also recognised, although they do not receive a share of the “8 per thousand”. But Islam was excluded.
Art. 8 of the Italian Constitution states that, “All religious denominations shall be equally free before the law.” Their relations with the state are regulated by law “on the basis of agreements with their respective representatives”. An agreement can only be requested by those faith communities that have been officially recognized and awarded legal status according to a 1929 law, the “law of admitted cults”. So far, no Muslim organization has managed to conclude such an agreement, and thus cannot even apply for a share of the “8 per thousand”.
The response to this week’s events in Brussels from some sections of the right-of-centre press has been uncompromising. “Islam has declared war on the West,” wrote Alessandro Sallusti. According to the editor of Il Giornale, all Muslims are the same. “We are saving, feeding and raising our enemies, even those who are ‘moderate’, who don’t handle bombs, because they feed the culture and the networks which protect, and are complicit with, those who set off bombs.”
He has an alternative to D’Alema’s attempt at fostering a moderate, “European” Islam. “They must stay at home, they must go back home.” This ignores the fact that throughout Europe those who are radicalised are most often second and third generation Muslims. They are “at home”.
D’Alema’s argument is simple: "The current situation, in which these people often live as separate communities, linked to their countries of origin, is something that keeps them apart from European society and creates areas where it is easier for fundamentalist, even terrorist, propaganda to infiltrate. I would like these people to feel like European citizens in all senses, I would prefer that they build their mosques as churches are built, with public money."
The shortage of official mosques means that there are hundreds of unofficial places of worship in Italy, with no way of knowing who is preaching or what ideas they are promulgating. Some young Muslims become radicalised in prison by their peers, in part because there are very few imams authorised to go into prisons and preach. Pushing a religion underground is rarely if ever effective. The Romans tried it with Christianity and we know where that got them.
In 2010, Imam Yahya, vice-president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community, responded to the failure to recognise his faith by arguing: "It is appropriate that we begin to work to legally recognise those moderate Muslims who for years have proven reliable interlocutors free from any fundamentalist ideology." In 2010 it was appropriate, in 2016 it is becoming urgent.
