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October 23, 2006

Italy: Politician Under Police Protection After Muslim Veil Comments

The Italian politician Daniela Santanche (pictured) of the right-wing National Alliance recently said on Sky Italia television that the niqab or Muslim veil was "not a religious symbol and it is not required by the Koran" and that it was "not a symbol of freedom".

The news of what ensued is reported by AKI and Agence France Presse via Middle East Times. Santanche was appearing on a show on Friday evening with Ali Abu Shwaima, the imam of the mosque in Segrate, Milan. The imam reacted to Santanche's comments by calling her "ignorant, false, an instigator of hate and an infidel".

Shwaima had said: "It is not true. I will not allow the ignorant to talk about Islam. The veil is an obligation required by God. Those who do not believe that are not Muslims."

The confrontation was repeated on Sunday on national television in a popular show, Domenica In. As a result of the imam's outburst, the interior ministry decided that the threats were serious. Santanche has now been placed under police protection.

Santanche told Domenica In that Italian law does not allow "for terrorism reasons, to go around masked." Several Italian towns in the north reintroduced bans on face coverings in 2004. These laws, which had originally been introduced by Mussolini, were revived on grounds of security.

For his part, Imam Shwaima said today that: "I should be the one to be under police protection and not Santanche."

Ms Santanche is deputy of the NA in Lombardy, and has previously written a book entitled Woman Denied, which is critical of the treatment of women under Islam.

Barbara Pollastrini, the leftist equality minister in the Prodi government, defended Santanche. She said: "The deputy expressed her opinion on the veil and a verse of the Koran. We are in a democratic country. Mr. Shwaima must know that in our country, threats, intimidation, and condemnations are not acceptable."

The latest person to join the debate is the highly controversial head of the Italian Muslim Union, Adel Smith (pictured, below right). The son of an Italian father of Scottish origin and an Egyptian mother, 43-year old Smith, who converted to Islam in 1987, is an embarrassment even to diehard Salafists.

In early January, 2003 on a TV show, "Carlo Pelanda, editorialist for the right-wing newspaper Il Foglio, screamed "terrorist" at Smith and leapt from his seat, triggering an exchange of slaps, punches and kicks between the two men, though it didn't seem to do much damage."

According to AGI the confrontational Islamist turns his attention to Daniela Santanche. Smith claimed that Ms Santanche is "ignorant because she does not know something and deficient because she lacks something."

He claimed that Shwaima was right and Santanche was wrong. Smith said that there is a verse in the Koran that states Muslim women must wear the headscarf (hijab) with their face UNCOVERED. This obviously does not include the veil over the face, which was the original subject of discussion. For Santanche to mention "faces covered" she is obviously referring to the niqab, and not the hijab.

Adel Smith stated of the police protection which was offered to the NA Lombardy deputy: "We do not understand who and why read in the imam's speech a life sentence. Anybody among the Muslims could believe the imam issued a life sentence. The death sentence was presumed only by Mr. Magdi Allam (a Corriere della Sera journalist) who made a specialised course with some unreliable secret services. He must deny it if he can and he must stop to tell nonsense."

Smith said that the Italian Muslims' Union would probably sue all the newspapers which are "defaming" Imam Ali Abu Shwaima.

Adel Smith is no stranger to lawsuits. He was the nemesis of writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci, who died on September 15. It was Smith who sued Fallaci on 8 April, 2004, for the crime of "vilipendio" or defamation against Islam. Oriana Fallaci died before the trial could be completed.

Smith himself is currently being sued for "vilipendio" against religion for calling the Roman Catholic church a "criminal organisation" on Italian television. While campaigning to remove crosses from public schools in Abruzzo, which his sons attended, in 2003 he threw a crucifix out of the window of a hospital where his mother was being treated. Hospital officials claimed that Smith had said: "My mother will not die in a room where there is a crucifix".

The campaign against crucifixes in schools ignited public outrage. In October 2003, Smith succeeded in getting a court in L'Aquila (Avila) to rule that crucifixes should be removed from a state-funded kindergarten in the town of Ofena. Initially, Smith had demanded that a symbol from the Koran should be displayed next to the crucifix on the classroom walls.

After the ruling, he said: "I have no fight with the crucifix. I have simply been granted a constitutional right that religious symbols should not be on display in the classroom where my children study."

Crucifixes have hung in schools since the 1920s under an edict introduced when Catholicism was the state religion. Mario Scialoja, a World Muslim League representative and a former Italian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told Vatican Radio that the ruling was unfortunate and said that Adel Smith "represents himself and perhaps two or three other people only." Muslims argued that if the decision was upheld, all Muslims would suffer from the fallout.

Another of Adel Smith's notorious lawsuits involved his attempts to sue the previous Pope, John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who is now Pope Benedict XVI) in October, 2004, states Robert Spencer. In this spurious lawsuit, Smith attacked John Paul for writing in his 1994 book "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" that the "richness of God's self-revelation" as found in the Old and New Testament had been "set aside" in Islam.

Cardinal Ratzinger was accused by Smith of stating in a 2000 document that the devout of faiths other than Catholicism were in a "gravely deficient situation".

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at October 23, 2006 6:25 PM

Comments

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