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  johnpi 7:50 pm on January 29, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: 'veiling' (31), covering (31), france (71), French face veil ban (2), italy, niqab (23), veil (40)

  Italy ‘to follow France with Muslim full-face veil ban.’

  Italy may soon follow France and seek to impose a ban on full-face Muslim veils.

  The country’s equal opportunities minister, Mara Carfagna, said the Italian government would work more closely on four draft bills on the burqa and niqab already circulating in parliamentary committees.

  This week a French parliamentary committee called for women wearing the niqab — a veil with just a gap for the eyes that is worn with a long robe — to be refused access to public transport, schools, universities, post offices and hospitals.

  Ms Carfagna, a former showgirl who prime minister Silvio Berlusconi made a minister in May 2008, said: “I completely agree with the French initiative, which I think will push other European countries and hence, also Italy, to enact laws on this issue.

   

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  thabet 4:37 am on December 26, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: italy, politics (765), racism (201), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  Just dropped by to note this article on Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation (Italy to the rest of us):

  [I]n this town of 8,000 inhabitants between Milan and Venice, the approach to Christianity’s most sacred festival has been marked in a very special way. On orders from [Coccaglio's] local council, controlled by the conservative Northern League, police have been carrying out house-to-house searches for illegal immigrants in an action dubbed Operation White Christmas. The operation is due to finish on December 25.

  Some 3,000 people have marched through the town in protest at the operation, which the Vatican called “sad and distressing”. But it has been endorsed by Silvio Berlusconi’s government. Visiting nearby Brescia, where he announced the opening of a detention camp for suspected illegal immigrants – a so-called centre for identification and expulsion – Berlusconi’s interior minister, Roberto Maroni, a leader of the League, complimented Coccaglio’s mayor.

  “Operation White Christmas has been carried out in other towns with other names and without arousing the same kind of clamour,” he said. “These are initiatives that serve to check and combat the phenomenon of illegal immigrants. So there is no ’story’ and no racism.”

   
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  johnpi 2:37 pm on November 4, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: cia (30), crime and punishment (9), extraordinary rendition (8), italy, kidnapping (10), rendition (10)

  Italy convicts former CIA agents in rendition trial.

  An Italian judge sentenced 23 Americans to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric, in a symbolic condemnation of the CIA “rendition” flights used by the former U.S. government.

   
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  johnpi 9:51 am on November 3, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: immigrant persecution (12), Italian racism, italy, Muslim persecution (19), racism (201), racism in Italy, religious persecution (19), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18), South Asians (8), Superior Sophisticated Civilisation Watch (25), violence (161)

  Due to the frequency of street violence against those identified as South Asians and Muslims in Italy, we need to create a new tag here at Talk Islam to categorize them since there are so many attacks. I haven’t been blogging them all, but I think it’s time to start. Any suggestions on a good short tag that describes the problem and/or might resemble the Google search of anyone trying to do research or reporting?

  Anyway, here’s the latest:

  Italy: Bangladeshi immigrant severely beaten on the outskirts of Rome, 30 arrested.

  The attackers were reportedly aged between 15 and 20 years of age. They were at a cafe across the street from the park when they spotted the migrants.

  A witness quoted by the Italian daily Il Messaggero heard them say “We must make these niggers disappear. We can’t allow these niggers to roam around Acilia any longer.”

  At that point the young men approached four Bangladeshi migrants who were sitting at a park bench.

  “You are a bunch of dirty people, we do not want you here in Acilia, you must all leave,” one of the young men reportedly shouted. “You dirty niggers we will show you that you have to do what we say,” said another one.

  Three of the immigrants reportedly ran away after being kicked and punched. One of the Bangladeshi migrants, Mohammed P. however, did not escape and was brutally beaten by the youths who surrounded him while shouting “Leave here you dirty nigger.”

  A witness called the police and the victim was quickly taken to hospital where doctors treated him for head trauma and a nose fracture.

   
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  johnpi 5:48 am on October 19, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: civil servants, government (15), government workers, indonesia (54), interpretation (5), italy, local government (2), schools (20)

  Indonesia: Muslim civil servants obliged to read Koran.

  The city council in Gorantalo, central Indonesia, has ordered its Muslim civil servants to read the Koran – Islam’s holy book – every Friday. Gorontalo mayor Adhan Dambea said Saturday that he was not yet satisfied with the implementation of his instructions.

  “Some civil servants are still unable to read the Koran fluently,” he said. Dambea said his administration would provide religious teachers to improve the civil servants’ ability to read the Koran.

  However, he promised that public service would not be affected by the new Koran reading activity in his administration.

  Elsewhere, In Italy: ‘No to teaching of Islam in schools’, says minister.

  Italy’s interior minister Roberto Maroni from the anti-immigrant Northern League party said he would not back a proposal to teach Islam in Italian schools to improve integration.

  “The Northern League is absolutely against the proposal of an hour of Islamic religion in Italian schools,” Maroni told the commericial TV programme Mattino 5.

  The proposal was put forward by the deputy minister of economic development Adolfo Urso.

  “While the hour of Catholic religion represents an entity, the Church, which has a hierarchy and contains clear, well defined values that can be conveyed, Islam on the other hand is a completely different case,” Maroni said.

  “The imam can freely interpret the Koran, there is not a series of tenets, there is not a clear message to convey…If the proposal served to improve integration, we would be all in agreement, but this is clearly the wrong way to do it,” Maroni.

   
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  johnpi 6:36 am on October 14, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: italy

  In the wake of the bombing attempt on an Italian military barracks, a “Muslim intellectual” in Italy wants state regulation, oversight and perhaps licensing of Italian mosques.

  “The intervention of the state would appear to be the lesser of evils at a time when the Muslim faith and Europe find themselves facing a totally new situation: the creation of an Islam outside its traditional geographical confines,” wrote Khaled Fouad Allam, a sociologist from Algeria living in Italy.

  “Italian Islam is in disarray. The mosques are unaccountable and some are in the grip of extremist groups which are banned in their countries of origin and are trying to regroup abroad,” he warned.

  Allam said Italy and other European countries urgently need to train men and women who reconcile European and Islamic values.

  This new generation should provide Muslims with authoritative religious leadership and replace the many “flagrantly mediocre” leaders currently to be found, he argued.

   
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  johnpi 5:39 am on October 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: italy, Terrorism (399)

  In Italy, two suspects arrested in military barracks attack.

  Two suspects and alleged accomplices were arrested early on Tuesday in connection with the attack against army barracks by a Libyan man, Mohammed Game, in the northern Italian city of Milan on Monday.

  Italian media reports say an Egyptian and a Libyan were arrested by police after they interrogated friends and family members. The Egyptian man helped Game reach the barracks, while the Libyan suspect helped Game in finding the explosives.

  More than 100 kilogrammes of explosives containing ammonium nitrate were seized at a house near Game’s.

  Meanwhile, Game’s wife Giovanna said she was “shocked” by the news and would have never suspected he could carry out a terror attack.

   
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  thabet 6:59 am on October 4, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: free press (13), italy, Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  It seems even his fellow Italians don’t agree that Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation is all that superior anymore:

  Tens of thousands of protesters thronged to a historic square in one of Europe’s largest capitals on Saturday to defend press freedom amid concerns of growing government interference in how the news is reported in Italy.

  “Free information, not on a leash,” Franco Siddi, the secretary general of the Italian Press Federation, told a crowd in the Piazza del Popolo that organizers estimated to be at least 300,000 strong. Police officials said the number was closer to 60,000.

  The group planned the Rome event “after a crescendo of episodes” suggested that the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was trying to exert pressure on the national news media, Mr. Siddi said later backstage.

   
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  johnpi 5:45 am on September 24, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Islamic Relief (3), italy, Muslim charity (12)

  Muslim relief agency delivers aid to quake victims in Italy.

  Volunteers from an Islamic non-government organisation have left the quake-devastated city of Onna in central Italy after having distributed over 1.5 tonnes of aid. Dozens of volunteers from Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt and Algeria worked with Islamic Relief to help victims of the quake by providing food, blankets and clothing.

  “During the past few months (since the April earthquake) we have distributed more than 500 blankets, 1.42 tonnes of food and drink, thousands of hygiene kits, huge quantities of clothes and other first-aid materials, to Monticchio, Bagno and finally Onna,” said the director of Islamic Relief for Italy Abdullah Gonzaga in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).

   
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  thabet 7:07 am on September 18, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: afghanistan (397), italy, kabul, occupation (49), taliban (261)

  Six Italian soldiers die in Kabul bomb blast, prompting Silvio Berlusconi to call for an exit plan.

   
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  thabet 2:19 am on September 5, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: freedom of speech (71), italy, politics (765), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  Superior Civilisation!

  Silvio Berlusconi was accused yesterday of using his influence over the media to block the promotion of a movie about his chauvinism starring at the Venice Film Festival.

   
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  thabet 6:28 am on September 4, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: business (19), consumerism (15), food (31), france (71), halal (15), Islam (244), italy, Ramadan (59), religion (365), wealth (23)

  Talking of markets, consumers, and religious rites and festivals:

  The big names in distribution [in France] have understood they can profit from this annual period of fasting by offering more halal products. In recent years Ramadan had become a high point for sales of these products in supermarkets. Auchan, for example, doesn’t hesitate to give ten or even fifteen times as much shelf area for selling halal food.

  According to a recent study by the Solis agency, which specializes in ‘ethnic marketing’, the halal market (in France) is valued at close to 4 billion euro for 2009, and is estimated to grow at annual rate of 15%. According to Solis, 93% of North Africans and 55% of sub-Saharan Africans buy halal products.

  In Italy, a hotel now caters especially for guests who are fasting.

   
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  thabet 3:21 am on August 20, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: eurabia (22), food (31), italy, racism (201), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18), state (101)

  Food fascism in Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation:

  This is unbelievable. After a wave of ugly rhetoric and dubious policies, a number of northern Italian councils run by the far-right Northern League (Silvio Berlusconi’s biggest coalition partner in government) have gone on the rampage against anything foreign.

  [...]

  In a nutshell, a council ordinance tabled by the Northern League bans all ‘ethnic’ shops and businesses from Capriate town centre. Most stunning is the motivation offered by the Chair of Trade and Safety at the local council: “This is not a racist decision [of course, ed.]. The town centre is short of parking space and those businesses would worsen traffic congestion”.

   
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  plimfix 5:22 am on August 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: fasting (11), italy, Ramadan (59)

  Farmers in Italy will be forced to break their fast during Ramadan. Sorry, erm, farmers in Italy will not be forced to break their fast during Ramadan. I hope that’s clear.

   
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  thabet 5:51 am on July 22, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: authoritarianism (7), Capitalism (22), democracy (84), iran (366), italy, mahmoud ahmadinejad (8), politics (765), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  Using Kung Fu Panda to link Italian and Iranian politics, and discuss democracy and capitalism? That could only mean an article by Slavoj Žižek:

  Is there a link between [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and [Silvio] Berlusconi? Isn’t it preposterous even to compare Ahmadinejad with a democratically elected Western leader? Unfortunately, it isn’t: the two are part of the same global process. If there is one person to whom monuments will be built a hundred years from now, Peter Sloterdijk once remarked, it is Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader who thought up and put into practice a ‘capitalism with Asian values’. The virus of authoritarian capitalism is slowly but surely spreading around the globe. Deng Xiaoping praised Singapore as the model that all of China should follow. Until now, capitalism has always seemed to be inextricably linked with democracy; it’s true there were, from time to time, episodes of direct dictatorship, but, after a decade or two, democracy again imposed itself (in South Korea, for example, or Chile). Now, however, the link between democracy and capitalism has been broken.

  [...]

  The wager behind Berlusconi’s vulgarities is that the people will identify with him as embodying the mythic image of the average Italian: I am one of you, a little bit corrupt, in trouble with the law, in trouble with my wife because I’m attracted to other women. Even his grandiose enactment of the role of the noble politician, il cavaliere, is more like an operatic poor man’s dream of greatness. Yet we shouldn’t be fooled: behind the clownish mask there is a state power that functions with ruthless efficiency. Perhaps by laughing at Berlusconi we are already playing his game. A technocratic economic administration combined with a clownish façade does not suffice, however: something more is needed. That something is fear, and here Berlusconi’s two-headed dragon enters: immigrants and ‘communists’ (Berlusconi’s generic name for anyone who attacks him, including the Economist).

  Kung Fu Panda, the 2008 cartoon hit, provides the basic co-ordinates for understanding the ideological situation I have been describing.

   
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  thabet 3:14 pm on July 12, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: fanatics (7), italy, muslims (347), politics (765)

  Fanatic threatens Italian MP:

  Italian MP and Muslim women’s rights activist Souad Sbai has received the support of hundreds of moderate Moroccan immigrant and Muslim groups after she received threats in an Internet video message by an alleged Al-Qaeda supporter in Italy.

  Someone needs to tell the reporter the use of ‘moderate’ is silly.

   
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  thabet 9:20 am on July 7, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: g8, geopolitics (119), italy, Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  I haven’t looked at Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation for quite sometime. Things aren’t going to well are they?

  Preparations for Wednesday’s G8 summit in the Italian mountain town of L’Aquila have been so chaotic there is growing pressure from other member states to have Italy expelled from the group, according to senior western officials.

   
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  thabet 2:28 am on June 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: far right (63), italy, law and order (2), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18), Superior Sophisticated Civilisation Watch (25)

  Superior Civilisation!

  Italy has sanctioned the creation of vigilante patrols for the first time since Mussolini’s notorious Blackshirt volunteer militia.

  A new law gives an official stamp of approval to vigilante groups that have sprung up in several Italian cities, especially in the northern strongholds of the right wing, anti-immigrant Northern League.

  The vigilantes can alert police to public order offences or suspected criminals but don’t have the power of arrest.

  One group, known as the Italian National Guard, claims to have 2,000 members. It plans to dress its members in khaki shirts, black ties and black armbands bearing a red symbol that critics say resembles a swastika.

  (Via Twitter.)

   
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  thabet 2:19 am on June 15, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: energy (32), international relations (189), italy, libya (21), muammar gaddafi, resources (25), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  What would Omar Mukhtar have made of this?

   
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  thabet 4:58 pm on May 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: italy, kidnapping (10), rendition (10), united states (577)

  A judge has ruled that the trial of an Egyptian imam who was the subject of a CIA ‘rendition’ (kidnapping) in Milan will continue.

  Not surprisingly, the US is not going to extradite the 26 spies accused in the case.

  Interestingly, an Indian-born US citizen, Sabrina De Sousa, named as one of the kidnappers, is launching a case of her own against the State Department, saying she should be given diplomatic immunity.

   
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  thabet 12:03 am on May 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: italy, politics (765), religion (365), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation:
  

  A prominent Italian convert to Islam, Hamza Piccardo, says his 25-year-old son Gabriele has been forced to withdraw as a conservative candidate in next month’s local elections in the northern Italian city of Imperia because of his religion.

   
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  Lawrence of Arabia 9:39 pm on April 24, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: italy, Kebabs, Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  Superior Civilization Watch: Stop those evil Kebabs before they hurt someone!

  But what brought dozens of people to a so-called protest lunch outside a doner kebab shop on Thursday was concern that the law was aimed at fast-food restaurants run by immigrants. The measure was approved Tuesday by the center-right majority, but was championed by the conservative Northern League, as a means to preserve the traditional identity of Italian cities. Recently, the party has been lobbying nationally to establish unarmed citizens’ groups that would patrol to prevent violent crimes, which are widely attributed to immigrants.

   
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  thabet 11:50 am on April 20, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: football (25), italy, racism (201), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18), sport (31)

  Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch: Juventus have been ordered to play a game behind closed doors after their fans racially abused 18-year old Inter Milan striker Mario Balotelli (an Italian international footballer of Ghanian descent).

  Some of the chants aimed at Balotelli included “a black Italian does not exist”.

   
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  thabet 4:35 pm on April 3, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: cia (30), extraordinary rendition (8), human rights (381), italy, rule of law (79), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18), state (101)

  “State secrets” invoked in Italian CIA kidnapping case.

   
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  thabet 7:51 am on March 31, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: human rights (381), italy, persecution (17), roma, Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18), state (101), violence (161)

  I suppose this is what Silvio Berlusconi meant by ’superior civilisation’:
  

  The huge rambling gypsy encampment outside Rome’s ring road known as Casilino 900 has shocked international visitors because of its bad conditions. But the brand new camp of Castel di Decima, another Roma settlement, with its rows of prefabricated huts miles from anywhere, is, if possible, even bleaker. In spite of the TV aerials and the children playing, it looks like a place of detention. All the more so now that it has been fenced off and uniformed police officers guard the gates.

   
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  thabet 9:32 pm on March 30, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: italy, religion (365)

  A Tunisian pilot who prayed as his plane went down is jailed for manslaughter by an Italian court.

   
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  thabet 7:22 am on March 22, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history (133), italy, politics (765), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  Perry Anderson has a couple of articles (1, 2) giving an insight into Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation (that’s Italy to the rest of us).

   
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  thabet 9:39 am on February 17, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: corruption (32), italy, politics (765), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  Now I know what Silvio Berslusconi means by Superior Civilisation (my emphasis):

  David Mills, the estranged husband of the Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, was today sentenced to four and a half years in jail by an Italian court after being found guilty of taking a $600,000 (£400,000) bribe as a reward for withholding court testimony to help Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi [...] Berlusconi – who was indicted alongside Mills, his former legal ­adviser on offshore dealings – is no longer a defendant. His government passed a law last year giving the prime minister and some other top Italian officials immunity from prosecution.

   
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  thabet 1:55 am on February 2, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: food fascism (2), italy, Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch: Kebabs and and other ‘foreign’ food ‘banned’ from some of Italy’s town centres.

   
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  thabet 11:20 am on January 13, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: culture (72), europe (82), Identity (75), immigration (51), integration (15), italy, race (80), Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch (18)

  Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior Civilisation Watch: NPR has a three-part series on race and immigration in Europe. Part 2 looks at  immigrants in Italy who find themselves facing the vitriol of populist xenophobic parties (which are part of Silvio Berlusconi’s Superior And Civilised Government); suspicion from Italian society at large; and physical threats of violence and intimidation from the security services.

  (Part 1 was about invisible German minorities.)