Italian town in turmoil after far-right mayor bans Muslim prayers
Italian town in turmoil after far-right mayor bans Muslim prayers
Bangladeshi residents and others in Monfalcone say decisions to prohibit worship at cultural centres and banning burkinis at the beach is part of anti-Islam agenda
Bangladeshi residents and others in Monfalcone say decisions to prohibit worship at cultural centres and banning burkinis at the beach is part of anti-Islam agenda
The envelope containing two partially burned pages of the Qur’an came as a shock. Until then, Muslim residents in the Adriatic port town of Monfalcone had lived relatively peacefully for more than 20 years.
Addressed to the Darus Salaam Muslim cultural association on Via Duca d’Aosta, the envelope was received soon after Monfalcone’s far-right mayor, Anna Maria Cisint, banned prayers on the premises.
“It was hurtful, a serious insult we never expected,” said Bou Konate, the association’s president. “But it was not a coincidence. The letter was a threat, generated by a campaign of hate that has stoked toxicity.”
Monfalcone’s population recently passed 30,000. Such a positive demographic trend would ordinarily spell good news in a country grappling with a rapidly declining birthrate, but in Monfalcone, where Cisint has been nurturing an anti-Islam agenda since winning her first mandate in 2016, the rise has not been welcomed.
Everyone likes to think of Italy as this land of the cultured and sophisticated with all the art, food, and architecture. But you'll find a lot of Italians are as racist and ass backwards as a toothless Klan member in Mississippi.
Italy literally invented fascism.
Hitler used to jerk off to pictures of Mussolini while building his movement.
Mussolini invented fascism, not Italy . Lots of Italians fell for it and supported it, the rest of the population - the vast majority - had to endure it and were straight up forced to live by its rules through persecution, imprisonment, violence, oppression, physical torture, displacement and homicide. Google the crimes of the Camicie Nere. Millions of Italians were killed because they wouldn’t accept the dictatorship. Look up the Partigiani fighters, they are the true heroes of the anti-fascist fight. Google the Fosse Ardeatine Massacre as one of many examples. Americans fancy themselves the saviours but they stepped in very very late when all the hard work had been done already by the Partigiani. Italy is historically a socialist country, so to say “Italy invented fascism” is just wrong.
"Everyone likes to think of Italy as this land of the cultured and sophisticated..."
This is no big deal and it's kinda funny, but really it just sounds like you thought that, and then were shocked when you learned otherwise lol.
Because I honestly don't know anyone who believes that. While I'm sure there are people who do, it's not this massive common misconception that you're claiming.
No I've never been and don't plan on going, mainly because of the racism and warnings from other black travelers. That being said outside of Europe the idea Italians are cultured, suave, and classy is definitely a thing. Europe in general is stereotyped that way.
Anecdotal but my impression is that most people feel like Italy is a culturally sophisticated place and don't realise there's a lot of racism and prejudism.
This tells more about you than about Italians
I know plenty of people who think that and agree with his assessment that most people view Italian culture as refined and sophisticated, just like the French.
As an Italian, I would say that's not the case, not "a lot of Italians are racist". I've had interactions with a few racist people of older generations, but I would say that they are the exception, thankfully.
You don't have votes the way you do without endemic racism. Football still has a massive problem too.
Would you say Italian football fans would be considered "a lot of Italians?"
Or Fratelli d'Italia party members and voters?
Sometimes I think racism is nutrients for a lot of italians because they can not and will not stop with it
I have never once in my life thought of Italy as being sophisticated. I feel like they definitely use to be but havnt been in a long time.
They also make very low quality export olive oil.
They actually make really good quality olive oil but "water" it down with cheap filler oils and export an inferior product because that's safer and more profitable than trafficking drugs.
Totally agreed. There's a reason why italians sided with fucking hitler during world war 2.
They are insecurity incarnate.
cultured and sophisticated
Maybe french but not italian culture, no. Italian is more about passion. Them and spain are a typical southern climate culture to other europeans.
Lol the french.
Have you ever heard of the Renaissance?
The Roman Empire tried to genocide the celts and many others. It's in their blood.
The decision to ban burkini is weird. You can't swim nude on Italy's beaches, but can't swim fully clothed either?
I can see how banning the Burkini in indoor pools makes sense from a hygienic perspective, but banning them on public beaches is just to take something enjoyable away from a specific group of people.
France is pretty strict on that. Apparently men can't wear trunk style swimming bottoms. I'm not sure how they handle the burkini vs rashguard issue. I know rashguards are very popular with a lot of east asians because they worry about skin cancer.
It doesn’t make sense even from a hygiene perspective, it’s just racism because no one has banned surfers and their wetsuits.
I'm pretty sure that's against italian constitution. Freedom of religion is a fundamental freedom on EU level as well.
Municipalities in Italy have been pushing an anti-Muslim agenda since at least 9/11 as part of the right-wing identity politics agenda.
Mosques and cultural centers are seen as radicalization centers.
They know that any court would shoot down shit like this as unconstitutional, but Italian law is slow as molasses and their goal is signaling to xenophobes and racists.
That's nice, since when have fascists ever cared? I mean like in all of human history?
They remember to care once the institutional boot of liberal democracy hovers above them.
Who knew electing fascists would lead to fundamental freedoms of minorities being removed?
Who knew electing fascists would lead to fundamental freedoms being removed?
FIFY
Christofascists are gonna fash.
Abraham hates everyone but mostly his children.
Bigotry aside, that seems like a wildly unenforceable law: What are they going to do? Go house to house to make sure people aren't praying the wrong way?
I mean, bigotry and unenforceability aside, it's also pretty unambiguously illegal.
Italy is a signatory to the ECHR which creates an explicit right to privacy (Article 8) and freedom of religion (Article 9).
The Italian constitution itself also specifies a right to religious equality before the law (Article 8).
Yeah that was gonna be my question: does Italy not have any legal mechanism in place that would be the functional equivalent of the US's supremacy clause?
Like...not saying shit like this isn't attempted all the time in deeply conservative areas of the US, but in most cases where the far right leadership has even a shred of strategic thinking, they often don't even attempt to pass or enforce laws like this because it'll trigger immediate challenge in the courts, the challenge will be 100% taken up and the decision will come down against them (since even in a conservative court, the only thing they hate more than ruling in favor of "liberal" causes is any ruling that would limit the court's power in the future), and at that point there's a permanent legal precedent in the books, against the repression they'd like to carry out.
Not defending this at all, but the ban only covers praying at "cultural centers", which I assume doesn't include people's private residences.
They truly could enforce against public Islamic worship illegal, depending on how broadly "cultural centers" is defined, and I expect fascists to define it to cover all of public life.
Still sounds unenforceable and, while I'm not familiar with Italy's legal system, probably illegal.
Muslims often have massive group prayer, it's about outlying public participation for one specific religious group.
The thing is that these group prayers can be conducted literally anywhere as long as it’s clean, so this law literally does nothing except openly expressing hate
The amount of hate and ignorance ITT is staggering. Do better Lemmy, please
What do you mean? I only see people here venting possible reasons for why European countries are vary of Islam. There's no hate going on here.
If there was a confused hyper normalized comment here it's yours.
There is a difference between trying to figure out why ppl are racist towards a particular group and saying that we should discriminate everyone equally who believe in god(The latter of which is prominent here)
I respect atheists a lot because they (mostly) actually do something good rather than bigotry in the name of god, but what I am seeing here is no different than extremism by other religious fanatics
‘Ban all prayers’ ‘My belief(s) are superior than others and anyone who doesn’t share my belief is dumb/terrorist etc etc’
They have turned atheism into some sort of cool shit for teenagers. ‘Oh you
don’t have a bikeare not atheist? LOL every cool kidhas a bikedoesn’t believe in your skydaddy lol, you are so gross and dirty and dumb’I have argued a lot about this on lemmy, and I will admit some are in good faith, but most of them were just religious extremist, just without the religious part
Edit(s): Shit ton of typos 50th edit: Great example down where you see people claiming anyone who follows a religion is dumb🤷🏼♂️
Why us there so much muslim hate in Europe, I just don’t get it
a lot of islamic terror attacks in the past have made people bitter.
and i mean a lot of them
So this is what Lemmy is doing now? "Why is there hatred of Muslims? Because
they're terroristsof frequent terror attacks."Maybe you had all these terror attacks because you already had large groups of disaffected young men who didn't feel like local society had anything for them and then became radicalised?
In France, Muslims are half as likely to get a callback for a job than Christians with the same credentials.. So people already hated them. The terrorist attacks are just the latest excuse.
I think it just might have to do with the history of Islamic terror attacks..
Such as the London bombings and bridge attack, Charlie Hebdo attack and the more recent stabbings in France, the Madrid train bombings which killed 193 people, the November 2015 Paris attack in which 130 were murdered, the 2016 Atatürk Airport attack in Turkey which left 45 dead, the 2016 Brussels bombings, just to name a few...
I'm not suggesting that all or even most Islamic individuals are dangerous/terrorists. But there is a long, bloody history of Islamic extremism throughout Europe.
I'm also not suggesting this justifies these bans in Italy whatsoever. I share this because it's essential context to answer your question.
Muslim immigrants will have de facto faced as much (if not far more) hostility and prejudice before any of those events.
What changed is that by the late 20th century, it had become politically unacceptable for right-wing parties to be perceived to be preying on overt racism towards their countries' brown-skinned citizens. But the War on Terror at the start of the 21st century created a new organising framework for nativists, whereby they could incite hatred against exactly the same brown-skinned people as before, but claim they were targeting them for their religion and not their skin colour. At the heart of it is still the same prejudice towards those who are different, it's just that the aspect of difference they choose to focus on today is more politically acceptable than the one they used to focus on.
From the perspective of a brown-skinned Muslim immigrant, the ideological hoops the far-right jump through are likely irrelevant. These people were targeted by nativists before, and they get targeted by nativists now.
There is a long, bloody history of Islamic extremism throughout Europe
All of the attacks you listed happened within a 15 year timeframe. Which is not coincidentally the War on Terror timeframe. The discrimination is a lot older and the history of Islamic-Europe relations is a lot more nuanced than this. Far more relevant is the growing Far-right sentiment and anti-immigrant rhetoric across Europe.
We don’t have black people to discriminate against, so we make do with browns after discriminating against Jews fell out of fashion.
Hehe, fash-ion.
A lot of people is mentioning terror attacks, but I think that's only part of it. The sexist nature of most muslim people living in Europe adds up to the mix. It seems to me that people in US are OK with burkini, just to mention something present in this article, but in Europe it is mostly seen as yet another sign of that sexism.
If there is one thing US has done well, it’s combating racism based on religion (Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism etc.) it still exists but much better than whatever the fuck is happening in Europe
Keeps us the hating the billionaires if we hate our fellow neighbours instead.
Probably because there is a, perceived or cultivated, associations between Muslims and immigrants/people of color. And if you can't outright punish someone based on "race" you go after the closest thing.
It’s not about skin colour, it’s about a way of life that is considered too radically different from their own: racists assume that muslims don’t want to integrate in Italian society, don’t follow the rules, abuse women with their hijabs and restrictions of movement (muslim women can’t drive nor go anywhere without a male relative). The native Muslim community is so minuscule in Italy that most Muslims are immigrants and speak other languages Italians don’t understand and makes them suspicious. They are concerned they could hide weapons under their tunics and hijabs. They don’t like that they cover their face and can’t be identified. It’s the lifestyle that they are bothered with, the skin colour is irrelevant. Italians were equally racist against Albanians in the 90ies because they were migrating in Italy by the thousands per day and were committing a lot of crimes, and Albanians are caucasians.
Right wing news outlets push Islamophobia hard. Same ones that love israel.
If you want to keep the imperialism going it's important that people hate whatever culture you're trying to invade so your country can "save it from barbarism".
Isn't this unconstitutional?
It's in italy, not the US.
Because the US is the only country with a constitution, amirite fellas?
Who said anything about the US?
Italy has a constitution, as far as I know most countries do
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions
If I understand correctly Italy also has a constitution...
Not sure why everyone is downvoting the original commenter. He seems to be correct that this is not supported by the Italian constitution. Kinda feels like we all ignored how italy's government actually works in favor of going "actually this isn't about America"... In a way that seems distinctly like it would only be possible from an American perspective 😅
Sincerely, an American who knows little to nothing about Italy's government
How about ban all prayers?
How about we invest in properly educating children so we won't need to worry about religion anymore?
hmmm.... no ? you understand that would hurt many people ?
Yes but then you're hurting everyone equally. This is actually a better idea than discriminating against a single group because it's actually fair.
anti-theists never care about the damage they inflict, as they are strong believers that the damages religion brings is infinitely worse than the atrocities they feel they must commit to eradicate it.
It's just another flavor of fanaticism that feels entitled to their violent rhetoric because 'they see more clearly'.
It's the same euphoria any zealot feels.
How about grow up and get over the fact your mommy wouldn't let you take your DS to church.
Wow. Way to project.
Thankfuly almost nobody goes to church here. Only 1% of country's population visited church on christmas.
euphoria
Christianity did this.
Why are the Guardian and the Observer becoming aware of this fact that happened a month ago?