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.
Mussolini invented fascism, not Italy
If this is the case you’re gonna have to give back a lot of things that are attributed to “Italy”. I think it’s well understood what is meant when someone claims something is from a region/area/country. It was an Italian and it took a country to back it. It’s Italian.
it took a country to back it
So you don’t understand how dictatorship works, ok.
My GF is Italian. That’s pretty much how she describes Italy.
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.
Frankly, that’s kind of hard to believe when your country has an openly fascist government
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
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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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
How is burkini different from a swimming suit that would warrant banking them from indoor pools?
You usually use the public shower before entering the pool and wearing a burkini in there kinda defeats the point. For the same reason you’re not allowed to wear anything other than regular swimwear.
I don’t understand how wearing a burkini defeats the point of the shower. A burkini is swimwear.
The shower before a pool is to ensure people aren’t entering the pool coated in dirt (e.g. sweat, hair, dead skin, etc…).
The chemicals in a pool are designed to bind to that dirt and kill any bacteria introduced.
There is a limit to the chemicals you can add to a pool (before it hurts humans) and once the amount has activated you need to drain the pool and refill it.
Swimming pools hold crazy amounts of water which is also really expensive to heat up, so pools want to do that as little as possible.
Clothing interfers with cleaning your body, so people entering near fully clothed (e.g. like a Burkina) will likely introduce more dirt into the pool.
That translates into increased costs for swimming pools or pools which maintain the old schedule and just operate unsafely.
This is all based on owning a hot tub and learning how to maintain it.
Hopefully this also explains why it doesn’t matter people enter the sea fully clothed
I’m not sure the ever empty most pools do they? They just continuously filter the water and keep adding chemicals?
Dude, I own a pool. What do you think a burkini is made out of, wool?
Yes? No? Maybe?
Do you know what they’re made of?
Without looking it up?
Cause I sure as hell don’t
The sheer amount of fabric
People pee in the pool. I doubt a Burkini is going to make the hygienic difference.
Hard agree. Pools are gross—anyone getting in one knows that and accepts it. I’ll take a lady in a burkini over an unattended child any day.
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As opposed to the benches that are purposely designed so you can’t lie on them. You see those all over the place under the guise of modern design language.
Christofascists are gonna fash.
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.
Muslims often have massive group prayer, it’s about outlying public participation for one specific religious group.
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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.
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We don’t have black people to discriminate against, so we make do with browns after discriminating against Jews fell out of fashion.
a lot of islamic terror attacks in the past have made people bitter.
and i mean a lot of them
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.
I don’t disagree with you that it’s the product of racism and discrimination. But the terror attacks also fuel that hate.
I can say the same thing about the consequences of my (US) country’s actions in the ‘war on terror.’ We’re the greatest contributing factor to the formation of ISIS. The casualties of our drone strikes alone (from Bush, Obama, and trump) were vastly civilian targets.
Whether it’s politically/religiously motivated drone strikes on civilians, bombs in subways, or knife attacks, those actions spawn further fear, hate, intolerance, and extremism.
Even though Italy is enacting racist policies/systems, they are able to gather support for/‘justify’ their actions due largely to the terror attacks throughout 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.
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”.
Why are the Guardian and the Observer becoming aware of this fact that happened a month ago?
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.
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.
I am stunned, stunned I tell you, that a culture famous for its misogyny is also backwards in nearly every other possible way.
now come on - don’t judge all Italians based on piece of shit Berlusconi and other fascists.
I’m sure all the good Italians will start rioting any minute now.
The article clearly says that 8k people in a town of 30k took to the streets.
That’s an impressive percentage. For comparison, 86.3 million US citizens protesting, which has never come close to happening, would be the same percentage as this little town.
… but how would I know that, not having read the article? /s
Yes, I commented without reading the article. Shame.
