Once again, the Italians show how its done.
Italy’s Northern League, allies of centre-right Prime MinisterSilvio Berlusconi, want to limit the growth of Islam in the centre ofworld Catholicism by blocking the construction of mosques throughstrict new regulations.
Muslim immigrants using Italy as aroute into Europe already get a foretaste of the mistrust with whichmany Europeans view their religion, with many projects for mosques andprayer halls already blocked by the opposition of local Italianresidents.
But if the anti-immigrant Northern League pushes itsbill through parliament — where Berlusconi’s coalition has a strongmajority — Italy will soon have a new law effectively blocking theconstruction of new mosques in much of the country.
Fearing the advent of “Eurabia,” the League has used its control ofBerlusconi’s interior ministry since helping him to power to pushthrough tough new laws against illegal immigrants.
It has nowturned its attention to the newcomers’ religion, emboldened by pollsshowing many Italians mistrust Muslims and a third do not want a mosquein their neighborhood.
The Northern League has “made lifedifficult for the Islamic component (of immigrants in Italy) in everysense and especially with regards to places of worship,” the presidentof the Islamic Cultural Institute of Milan, Abdel Hamid Sha’ari, toldReuters.
Not just recent or illegal immigrants feel unwelcome,but also established Muslim residents like Jihad Amro, who said: “Ihave paid taxes for 17 years but I still don’t feel at home.”
“There are still situations where I feel uncomfortable or strangebecause they (Italians) don’t see me as someone who is integrated,”Amro, a Palestinian, told Reuters TV in Rome.
The League’santi-Muslim protests have often made headlines, such as when RobertoCalderoli, now a cabinet minister, walked his pet pig on a proposedmosque site to defile the soil or wore a T-shirt of the ProphetMohammad, triggering riots in Libya.
The League runs many townhalls in the prosperous north, the homeland it calls “Padania” which isalso home to a majority of Italy’s immigrants and of its more than 1million Muslims.
Estimating that permission for a new mosque orprayer hall is granted somewhere in the country every four days,Northern League parliamentarian Andrea Gibelli told Reuters: “Iconsider this to be an unfettered colonization of our culture.”