Italy's Northern League, the populist, xenophobic, sometimes separatist movement that is a key component of Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition, has proposed new legislation which would in effect halt construction of new Islamic mosques.
The bill, which the League's chief of deputies Roberto Cota is expected to send to parliament next week, would require regional approval for the building of mosques. It would also require that a local referendum be held, that there be no minaret or loudspeakers calling the faithful to prayer, and sermons must be in Italian, not Arabic.
Chances of this being approved as it stands are slim, since it clashes with a number of constitutional rights and there was no immediate support from either Berlusconi's Forza Italia party or from the exfascist National Alliance.
But there has been cautious support from the small, ultra-Catholic UDC party, and the proposed anti-mosque legislation undoubtedly reflects widespread feeling among Italians that some defence against a rapidly rising Islamic presence is needed. At present, the Muslim population in Italy is estimated at 1m, with 258 registered mosques.
The Northern League, which theoretically favours the secession of northern Italy from the centre and south, won more than 8 per cent of the vote at the April general elections, and has always trumpeted defence of national values of the northern Italian "race" as the natural product of its homeland.
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Source: Financial Times (English)
9 comments:
What I know of the Fascist ideology in Italy prior to heavy German pressure in the mid-1940s, late into the war, is that the Italian Fascist Party had little sympathy for racism, Mussolini considering Italians to be a mix of many races and peoples.
One might check against the works of Gregor, Griffin, LaQueur, Mosse, Paxton, Payne, Sternhell, Vincent, E. Weber, et al.
The point being that we shouldn't automatically assume that Fascists are racists. It could well be that the Italian people generally, as a mied but unified people, simply do not like the idea of jihadis taking over piece by piece, block by block, law by law, a formerly Catholic country, one still steeped in Catholic tradition, in European culture, and in high Renaissance humanism.
Maybe the Northern League is racist; but it's not an assumption I'm willing to make without some evidence, and even then without some definition of the term.
The title is wrong. They want the citizen to have a say, and they refuse the symbol of dominance and the doing down of other faiths with public declarations of "Alla is greater" and "there is no god other than Allah"
That is the dhimmitized British perspective. To the liberal British press not being a legal, moral, ethical, and cultural relativist is 'xenophobic.' Rome is and always has been the most cosmopolitan city in the world. They have no space and they refuse to fund the building of mosques. La Lega Nord was founded on the principle of 'pay to play.' It's anti-welfare state, pro-cultural Darwinism. Race has nothing to do with it, nor has it ever had anything to do with non-Muslims dealing with Muslims. It is a Catholic country and if Muslims can't respect that they should leave. To call La Lega Nord fascist is to misunderstand the term. They are not totalitarian or colonialist. Italians were never racist, and fascism does equal racism, just supremacy. La Lega Nord isn't populist either. They're as pro-industry, pro-commerce, pro-Northern power (because the North pays 75% of the taxes) as can be. If they had anything against Arabs they would have ditched Sicily long ago. Sicilians are Catholic Arabs, and yet, they have no morality. Sicily is an honor culture which is incredibly backward and resistant to change. It is misogynist, it is violent, and marriages are usually arranged, often incestuously. Italians have been too tolerant for too long if you ask me. The mosque issue is a matter of space and the fact that Islam isn't recognized in Italy because they literally can't get together a council of 6 Muslims who will recognize Israel and denounce genocide despite years of trying. For them to ask for a mosque before they can even convene this group is crazy, outlandish, and ridiculously entitled. Of course, they want Italy to pay for it but they want to not pay taxes and collect welfare at the same time because Italy owes it to them somehow.
Also Dag, Italy did elect Mussolini, but they also dissolved once upon a time in order to ditch fascism. There were two Italies during WWII, with Mussolini having only a tiny safe haven, Salo`, in the North. The vast majority of Italians were partigiani and did not support the Axis. Italians just have this tendency to go for extreme politics, but what's considered far-right (fascist!) in Europe is if anything ridiculously centrist, while the communist left is of course viewed as 'moderate' in Europe.
Hi jdamn13,
Sicilians are Catholic Arabs?!
You think they're backwards thus they can't be European? Or is European native culture so weak that it can't stand 100 years of Arab rule and can never regain its footing?
You want to convince people that Lega Nord is not racist, but then you bring racial arguments to prove your point. What does that mean?
Hi Esther,
My argument was not racist or even racial. I argued that Sicilians are Catholic Arabs on cultural, not racial grounds. Racially, Sicilians are a little bit of everything. They actually consider themselves to be more Spanish than Italian, but from a more objective point of view their culture is incredibly Arab in many, many ways. Even their poetry invokes lots of animal imagery, and their prose, particularly Verga's, is quite pastoral and deals with folk tales and the supernatural. Pirandello's stories all deal with how women in Sicily essentially live their lives as sex slaves/work horses, and how this causes either insanity or the death of the soul, and how the men grow up without mothers because the women are too distant as a result of what Sicilian society does to them. The fact that Sicilian society hasn't changed in 100 years and that Pirandello's stories could just as easily be set in modern Sicily proves their resistance to change. Sciascia's stories (which are awesome, btw, absolutely un-put-down-able) deal with how corruption is rampant in Sicilian society, at every level, even in the home. I've studied Sicilian culture for years. My BA is in Italian. Sicily really is more Arab than it is Italian. Even their language is very Arabic-influenced, not as much as Maltese is, but close. They have no o's or e's (which are like ay's) or voiceless consonants, just like Arabic. They kept crazy laws left over from fascism on the books until the 1990's. Watch 'Divorzio Italiano' or 'Sedotta e Abbandonata.' The first deals with how the Sicilian government turns a blind eye to honor killing so the protagonist gets to kill his wife so he can marry another woman, as well as with the anonymous-letter-writing shame culture and their uptightness/double standard regarding adultery. The second deals with a girl who gets knocked-up and has to marry her sister's fiancee in order for her family to not 'have to' kill her to save their honor, and how her sister then has to become a nun because the family only has enough money to pimp away one of their daughters (they have a reverse dowry system, like in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh). It also deals with how Sicilian families cannot be honest with themselves when it comes to the simplest, most obvious things, like death, because that is how Arab families operate. Italians are typically honest to a fault, which makes for great sound bites, btw.
My point was that la Lega Nord is really quite tolerant, particularly when it comes to race, as is Italy generally. When France was selling their Jews down the river during the War, Italy had a huge concerted effort to forge documents to keep their Jews safe that extended into every government office, and the resistenza movement was so strong that they pushed Mussolini's fascist government into a tiny corner of Salo` and started over from scratch so the Allies could defeat the Axis. The whole point of the party is that they are not cultural, moral, ethical, legal, or intellectual relativists. They respect traditional Italian values, which have always been incredibly tolerant of others. What they don't like is free-riders who don't pay to play, and who bring the country down to the level it's at right now. Hard-working, educated people can't get jobs, can't move out of their parents' houses, can't get married, and can't have kids -- all because of the ridiculous welfare state that allows people to receive benefits without even working. They basically have an American vision for Italy, one in which the American dream is a reality like it was for them from the 1970's through 1995 or so when illegal immigrants starting arriving in droves to 'la Nuov'America.' They don't like socialized medicine. They don't like welfare for people who don't work. They have no intention of ever recognizing polygamy. How is that intolerant or fascist? That's called REASONABLE and NON-SUICIDAL.
The article discussed in your post from the 6th (which, btw, is no longer on the Counterterrorism blog, but can still be found on IPT ) discussed how Italy has tried and tried for 6 years to get together a council to represent Islam in Italy, as all religions are required to have in order to be recognized, but apparently they cannot find a representative group of 6 Muslims who will renounce genocide and terrorism and who will recognize Israel.
The 'oppression' of the Muslim community in Italy is 100% the fault of the Muslim community. How anyone could possibly buy into Muslim 'victim' rhetoric at this point, especially in Europe, is beyond me. Muslims are always victims unless they have Sharia law, welfare for not working, all the Hindus and Buddhists killed off, Jews and Christians as dhimmis, and Israel doesn't exist. And even then the king/shah/prime minister/ayatollah is their oppressor. Every jihadic conquest has been carried out under the cloak of 'victimhood.' Even the native Medinians were incredibly tolerant of the Muslims, but the Muslims killed them all because they saw themselves as oppressed. Why? Because they didn't own the land, didn't have all the polytheists klled off, didn't rule over the Christians and Jews, and didn't own all the property that belonged to the infidels and get to take their women and children as slaves yet. Were the Egyptians or the Turks persecuting Arabs when they overran and destroyed their countries? How about India half a world away? Were the Indians (then Hindustanis) oppressing the Arabs? Of course not. They had never heard of the Arabs. The Indonesians? Were they oppressing Muslims from their island in the middle of the Pacific? Is that even physically possible? How about the Israelis? They give Arabs more rights and freedoms and more respesentation in their government then they receive in any Arab country, and the 'Palestinians' in Gaza and the West Bank are the only Arabs who can afford to go to college, and they literally have a higher standard of living that everyone in every Arab country with the exception of royalty. But the Israelis are 'oppressing' and 'persecuting' them. It's a 'holocaust,' and they're 'colonialist.' Had some Muslim country come along and taken over the West Bank or Gaza, since they were up for grabs and that's what would have happened had Israel not won, would they be oppressing them? No, but both the Israeli and the 'Palestinians' would have it much, much worse. Until they have their Ummah and it extends to Spain Muslims will always consider themselves victims. Muslims want to turn Italy Muslim because they belive that if they do so they will have defeated Christianity, just like Bin Laden blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon so that he could conquer 'Christianity.'
Italy is the heart of Christianity. I would not find it remotely unreasonable to ban Islam from Italy until Saudi Arabia lets people of other faiths not just enter, but live in Mecca and Medina free of persecution. I have never been more proud of Italy for being the only country in the free world to put their foot down and have a backbone.
NO MORE MOSQUES SHOULD BE BUILT ANYWHERE until Saudi Arabia allows for the building of churches, and until several years have passed since churches and temples have stopped being destroyed in Egypt, India, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and Pakistan, and until they can be built anywhere in every one of those countries, and the Maronites and Chaldeans can live free of persecution in Iraq, Lebanon, and 'Palestine,' until anyone of any faith can live in Pakistan without persecution, until Kashmir is safe for the NATIVE Hindus, and until Muslims STOP KILLING ISRAELIS.
Italy is way too liberal. That's how they got themselves in the mess they're in right now. The free world is too liberal when it comes to Muslims. We could just outlaw Islam because practicing it is tantamount to sedition. We did that with communism, which was infinitely more benign and infinitely less violent. It's crazy that we don't. A thousand years from now people will agree with me. They will look back at the free world's ignorance of Islam and at our dhimmitude and pull their hair out wondering what was wrong with us that we could do this to ourselves only 50 years after fighting a world war over to defeat Nazism and Shintoism, after millions of infidels have been killed even in Europe just in the last hundred years, let alone South Asia and the Middle East, even as the jihad rages on today in Kashmir, in Israel, in Sudan, in Chechnya, and of course, in London, Madrid, New York, and DC. Please read this article, Esther: http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/the-two-kinds-of-dhimmis/ . Please read everything Bill Warner has written.
La Lega Nord is incredibly reasonable. Apparently not being a suicidal communist who wants to slash your own throat with moral, ethical, legal, cultural, and intellectual relativism and allow for the creation of a parasitic parallel society is fascist. They're farther left than the US Republican party, who is too far left for me, since we let housewives vote and give people tax breaks for dependents. THAT is too parasitic to be tolerated. We were founded on the principle of no taxation without representation, that should be a two-way street, and paying for other people's families while I live hand-to-mouth in grad school because I chose to be respectable, responsible human being and not whore my life away in exchange for a free ride and a tapeworm's epitaph and to not have children that I can't afford because no child should EVER be born to parents who cannot guarantee them the best healthcare, the best education, good teeth, and a free ride through college -- is absolutely unacceptable to me. I can't imagine living in a country where we give people welfare indefinitely for not working and support multiple 'wives' who don't work and their children. It's disgusting. No more mosques. No more jizya.
Hello,
[JDAMN13] 2 Points on which you are incorrect
I think you need to take a trip to Israel and the occupied iterritories. You have absolutely no idea what the reality of life is for the Palistinians. Rights ? Freedom ? Animals in the zoo have more rights and freedom then teh Palestinians have
Why should muslims recognise Israel ? It is a country forced on the region by the imperial powers after the 2nd world war.
Tiny corner of Salo ? Lol, maybe you should become a full time comedian, actually maybe not.
Anyway, aou need to get out more and actually see the world, rater rely on other people's rantings to base your argments on.
in a bubble and only sees his own distorted image when he gazes outward. Go live in Israel? Done that, buddy, and I know what you can't: the facts and the realities of the world there and elsewhere.
Ideologues and fools can lie to themselves, but it doesn't work when others know the game and refuse to play it.
Dag's right. You're the one who needs an education, Slim69. Read up about the 'horrible' condition of the 'Palestinians' compared to the rest of the Arab world here and here. Then learn about what actually happened in the Middle East in 1948 here, since cracking a history book is apparently too arduous for you. Then explain to me why it is that the 'Palestinians' are the only people to have been refugees for 60 years, how they're the only ones who have failed to get their stuff together despite having been the #1 recipient of UN aid for 60 years now. Then explain to me how they're somehow ISrael's problem and why Israel shouldn't just boot them the hell out of their land and, while they're at it, take back the Sinai? None of that land would have even been theirs had 5 sicko-pervert nations not descended on Israel in repeated genocidal campaigns. It's Israel's. Why should I feel sorry for the 'Palestinians?' People make their own realities. Has the free world ever asked for endless handouts? Or did we just commit ourselves to honest, hard work and legitimate education and make great lives for ourselves? They are evil, lazy, inbred psychopaths who deserve everything they do to themselves. The Egyptians are disgusting, truly sick monsters and they can't even handle the thought of "Palestinians" in their country, which is why they built a wall just like Israel did. I guess Egypt's an 'apartheid state' too, huh? Oh, that's right, they drove out all their Jews and their Christians actually do live under apartheid, unlike the Arabs in ISrael, who have it better than Arabs in every other Arab country, and who have their own political party and actual upward mobility, something they wouldn't have anywhere else in the Middle East. If the free world had any decency we would have cut 'Palestine' off in 1948, let alone when they freaking elected Hamas. Talk about deluded entitlement.
And yes, Mussolini's government was a tiny corner of Italy called Salo`. I have a BA in Italian. Read 'The Second World War' by John Keegan. It has a great map of how nothing Salo` was. Watch 'Salo`' by Pasolini. Learn. Shoot, read 'Catch-22' for God's sake.
'Other people's rantings?' You mean like your Muslim Brotherhood Islamic 'education?' Gotta go. The sun's about to set in a muddy puddle after revolving around the flat Earth all day and I have to do my ass-wiping, Jew-cursing, brain-washing session or else Allah will get mad at me and I won't be able to flush the jinns out of my sinuses in the morning no matter how much water I snort.
l'll squeeze in one last comment here before I throw up my hands at the Left/Muslim insanity that passes for educated discourse in our time: The German philosopher Fichte wrote, "It depends of what kind of person one is." That sums it up; that some people are honest and decent, and some are Leftists and/or Muslims and/and fools.
Fichte gave up and concluded rightly that it just depends on the kind of person one is. We really can't do better than that.
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