“Does it make sense to cater simultaneously to radical homosexuals and Islamists?”
by Paul Belien
Last week, the Italian interior minister, Giuliano Amato, hosted a conference in Rome on “Islam and Integration.” Italy, one of Europe’s southern border states, has 1 million Muslims out of a population of 58 million people. Illegal immigrants arrive in Italy in huge numbers. According to a recent http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2237, the country could count almost 7 million Muslims by the end of the next decade.
The Italians, however, have a way of dealing with illegal immigrants. They regularly transform them into legal residents by granting them official papers. Since 1988 Italy has organized six amnesties for illegal aliens — the last one in 2006, when 500,000 people were given permission to stay. Most of them leave Italy shortly afterward. Since Italy belongs to the European Union and since the EU adheres to the principle of the free movement of persons, an amnesty gives immigrants the right to freely enter all EU member states. Italy allows the immigrants in so that they move out, to EU nations with more generous welfare systems.Mr. Amato, a former prime minister of Italy as well as the former vice president of the EU’s Constitutional Convention, boasts that his country has few problems with Muslims. They are well integrated in Italian society, he told the conference. The Socialist politician downplayed phenomena such as violence toward women by Muslim immigrants. Mr. Amato said wife beating is also customary among indigenous Italians in Sicily — a comment which infuriated Sicilian politicians.
One of those attending last week’s conference was the Dutch integration minister, Ella Vogelaar. Like Italy, the Netherlands has a population of about 1 million Muslims (of a total 16.5 million people). Upon her return home, Mrs. Vogelaar gave an interview to Trouw, a Dutch Protestant newspaper. She said that Muslim immigrants must feel appreciated. According to the minister, the Dutch have to help “Islam take root in the Netherlands.”
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2259