A false problem
Amara Lakhous 10 February 2009

President of the Chamber of Deputies Gianfranco Fini has chosen an international stage to reaffirm his position regarding the presence of Islam in Italy. Whilst in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, Fini stated, “Preaching in mosques must be done in Italian. The Koran must be preached in the language of the country where the Muslim lives”. Is it right to take this very Italian and inappropriate debate abroad? Would it not be more useful for the government to first look thoroughly into the issues surrounding Muslim immigrants?

These are the two questions which I would like to ask the President of the Chamber of Deputies. ‘Italianising’ the Friday Sermon is an imaginary problem, or at the very least it is not a priority. In my opinion, Fini’s statement was only instrumental (only to appear on the spot and not to be shadowed out by his “comrades” Berlusconi and Bossi), and thus there will be no effect on the political agenda. There seem to be many doubts surrounding the issue, and I will discuss a few below:

One. The Northern League now has complete freedom over immigration issues, and so the President of the Chamber really needs to make his voice louder towards his allies within the government. Five months ago in a meeting in Venice, the deputy mayor of Treviso stated, “We want a revolution against those wanting to open mosques and Islamic centres. This includes the authoritative figures in the Church who have requested we let them pray. I say no. They should go and pray in the desert. I want a revolution against the phone centres where customers sit down to eat in the middle of the night and then piss up the walls – let them go and piss in their mosques”. This comment is to be taken extremely seriously, and Fini cannot continue acting like an ordinary citizen or an exponent of the opposition. He is the second (or maybe the third) leader after the President of the Council, Silvio Berlusconi, and therefore must apply his ideas to immigrants in general and to ‘Italy’s Islam’ in particular, within his political alignment.

Two. Fini’s plan for Muslims in Italy is held to ransom by the obsession to only consider the problem of Islam as one of law and order, marking anyone attending mosques as a potential terrorist. Herein lies the need (clearly unfounded) to impose Imams to address their worshippers in Italian rather than Arabic, to be able to hold a better control over them. Allow me to be controversial here – for security reasons, would it not be more effective to let Imams conduct their sermons in Arabic, to single out the violent people present who need to be sent back to their native countries immediately? It would be a perfect trap with indispensable proof!

Three. To insist on Italianisation in the Friday Sermon would be like creating a smoke screen. Unlike followers of other religions, today Muslims in Italy, more than ten thousand of whom are Italians converted to Islam, are denied a place of worship. People go on about local referendums for building a mosque, forgetting the two articles in the Constitution which guarantee the right to worship. And how can we forget the Northern League’s proposal which forbids building any Muslim place of worship within one kilometre from a church!

Last but not least, we need to remember that ‘Italianising’ the Friday Sermon is nothing new, but part of the various measures taken since 9/11 to fight the alleged ‘Islamic terrorism’. Imams were (and still are) objects of strong distrust, because they are viewed as the ‘evil masters’, recruiting new terrorists in the name of Jihad, the holy war – this problem does also exist, but not as it is presented. In Italian mosques there are Imams who only speak Arabic, such as the Imam of the Great Mosque in Rome who was appointed directly by the Egyptian religious authorities, Al-Azhar. It would therefore be more appropriate to copy the French model and create an Imam training school. And on that note I have one last request for the President – we want to see deeds, not words!

Amara Lakhous is an Italian-Algerian writer and anthropologist. He is the author of “Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio” (Europa Editions 2008) and has lived in Rome since 1995.

Translated by Helen Waghorn

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