Nilüfer Göle 12 June 2017
We are witnessing a crucial moment in European history in which « Islamic question » becomes a decisive element, a master symbol of difference in debating identities and setting political agendas.
terrorism
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- 12 July 2016There is no country in the “Old Continent” left immune by the terrorist attacks carried out or at least inspired by the Islamic State, although the largest number of victims of this unusual violence is reported in Middle Eastern countries (especially in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey) as the control of those territories conquered in the name of Jihad’s ideology in Syria and Iraq is becoming harder.
- 7 July 2016Only twice has Bangladesh made headline news in recent years: three years ago, when a complex of clothes factories collapsed in the suburbs of Dhaka killing over 1,200 people, and again last Friday when a group of armed men attacked a place patronised by Westerners killing 20 people, eighteen of them Westeners. The attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery, a café-restaurant in Dhaka’s most exclusive district, was not totally unexpected. There had been many signs indicating that Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most unstable countries in south Asia with 150 million inhabitants, of which the majority are Muslims, had sunk into a political crisis in which Islamist extremism is a destabilising force.
- 4 July 2016There have been 17 terrorist attacks in 12 months, in which 300 people died and about 1,000 were wounded. The suicide bombers who attacked Ankara’s airport carried out the sixth attack of 2016, a trail of blood and death that decreed the profoundly comatose state of Turkey’s tourism. The words spoken by the Minister for Tourism, guaranteeing that “all security measures to prevent further attacks have been implemented”, will not be enough to bring tourists back to Turkey. Among the elements that President Erdogan will not be able to underestimate anymore when drafting a “list of priorities” that Ankara intends to pursue to ensure a future without terrorism and relaunch Turkey’s image there is the resumption of negotiations with the Kurds and a zero tolerance policy as far as jihadists are concerned. This would mark a change of direction essential for the pacification of a country that, over the past years, has all too often found itself counting the victims of massacres that could (maybe) have been avoided.
- 9 January 2015The barbarian and inhumane attack on innocent French journalists and cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo — following incidents like the massacre in Peshawar, the killings of the innocent Yazidis by the Islamic State and the kidnapping of 172 women by Boko Haram in Nigeria — have created a sense of alarm and fear of religious fanaticism. Fear of religious fanaticism is nothing new in our world. What is new about all these attacks is that they have all taken the form of a new barbarism.
- 27 October 2014“The first to pay with their lives are those who profess this religion in a peaceful, calm and respectful manner.” With those words the Italian Speaker of the House Laura Boldrini commented on her meeting with the secretary of Italy’s Islamic Cultural Centre, Abdellah Redouane, and the faithful who were meeting for Friday prayers at Rome’s Great Mosque. This was an encounter that the Islamic community had wanted and requested and addressed at Italians and Muslims in order to say “no to terrorism” and reiterate that “Islam is a religion of peace.” Those words were part of the clear and explicit appeal read at a table at which the Italian state’s third highest ranking official sat next to authorities of the largest mosque in Europe.
- 22 August 2014Deputy Foreign Minister Lapo Pistelli is the Italian government’s delegate for the Middle East and in the past was a professor and OSCE representative as well as being a former member of the Italian and European parliaments’ Foreign Affairs Committees. Pistelli’s long summer started when he returned to Italy with the last flight out of Erbil before U.S. air strikes on ISIS jihadists began. There he saw first-hand Iraq’s wounded image in refugee camps, filled with those who had already abandoned everything to flee the men led by “Caliph” al-Baghdadi, and were now preparing to flee once again. Today, he believes, such an international crisis or the decision-making system in place called upon to remedy matters, are no longer issues to be addressed by desk-strategists, because when events are this harsh, a backlash can only be prevented by the United Nations’ centrality and the flexible of politics and diplomacy.
- 30 May 2014Original article published on CNN When religion is used, or misused, as a violent tool against the innocent, then it is the user not the tool that is the source of violence. The mere idea of traumatizing a human soul violates all values on Earth. Whether based on religious texts or human interpretations, no value in the history of mankind justifies any brutal act against any of God’s creation.
- 12 September 2011The show goes on. In Italy we continue to see “theocons” on TV, improvised experts, not Islamologues but Islam-demagogues, with no knowledge of languages spoken in the Islamic area and who have never attended courses on Islam. They do however publish books with great publishing houses and are invited on television as experts on Islamic subjects.
- 11 January 2011This history of the Copts “is a long history of suffering that has lasted since the days of the Islamic invasion in Egypt.” Sounding exasperated, Ashraf Ramelah, president of the Voice of the Copts association, speaks of how the conditions experienced by Christians in Egypt “have constantly worsened” since the coup d’état carried out by Gamal Abd el Nasser. “His nationalisation policies,” says Ramelah, “were addressed at discriminating against the Copts.”Interview by Ernesto Pagano
