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
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.
Was Mussolini part of the government when fascism was invented? Then yes. Italy invented fascism.
It's okay. It's history.
What does that even mean…
Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini invented fascism. Indeed, it’s history. Whathttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_fascism
Correct. They were part of the government at the time, therefore Italy invented fascism.
Just like Britain invented the first tank. Not "some dude in the government."
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.
So you don’t understand how dictatorship works, ok.
Not the point. That's a huge red herring.
So if any italians are like Israel. A country with a rich history of strife and oppression but basically ignore it because it's easier to blame others (in this case brown ppl/immigrants) as the cause of all their problems slowly sliding back to the ideals (in this case racism and fascism) they supposedly rejected.
You are missing the point. The Dutch has Nazi's too, but also a lot of resistance. There is good and bad all around, even within people. If you want to label it as one thing, that would be shortsighted.
100,000 max (45k combat. 45k pow camps) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_resistance_movement
My GF is Italian. That’s pretty much how she describes Italy.
As a land of culture and sophisticated art or a land of toothless racists? Or is it both at the same time?
I can say that it is both
Yes.
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.
Frankly, that's kind of hard to believe when your country has an openly fascist government
Fascism is not exclusively about racism. It’s a government style were the first victims are the citizens themselves. Racism is a component of it.
Damn, you must not live there, even in the south, were people are mostly ignorant, all I hear is complains about giorgia meloni and how shitty her government is 🥶🙏
But why did she win if not because of the majority of voting Italians wanted her? (which could be just half+1, I concede)
This is why Trump won in 2016. Complacency. "Everyone in my state hates his guts. He must not be popular, then. I don't even need to vote since Clinton will clearly win!"
Replied to the other person about this!
I don't live in Italy, that's correct. But if nobody likes the fascists, who voted for them, then?
The most likely reason is that most of the young people did not vote, leaving the vote to old people and middle aged ones.
Though, by living in the south, I may have a different view of it, as most politicians hate our southern asses, including the meloni
Edit: so, excluding most younger people, it leaves most of the northerns individuals ( who usually have more money invested in their infrastructure by governments ) and old people who are likely to vote for her. But it is still weird as literally anyone I talk to, not friends, just random people,vsay that they have not voted for her, even including some oldies that I know personally
Edit 2: no but like seriously, literally no one likes her, especially after the shitshow she has been making with the bonuses
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?"
How about Serie A itself?
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.
Even if we fully ignore that it was Mussolini, by that broken logic modern Germans are Nazis which they so obviously aren't.
I'm not saying this situation isn't a shambles but trying to say all Italians are insecurity incarnate is honestly stupid. They just aren't. Most Italians are lovely.
OP didn't say "Today's Italy" sided with hitler. Most Italians are indeed lovely, yes. But your comment is a strawman.
Nah, op clearly meant present day Italians, the comment you are replying to is not a straw man
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.
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.
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
Dude, I own a pool. What do you think a burkini is made out of, wool?
You seem to be intentionally missing the point, but to reiterate..
You shower before entering a pool to wash the dirt from your body off (your cleaning yourself).
The more of your body covered the less effective that shower is.
Ideally everyone would be naked in the shower, but there are probably outfits which increasingly render the shower less and less effective (e.g. speedos are better than shorts, etc .).
It would not surprise me if a Burkina covered so much that the cleaning shower is rendered pointless
Everything here is wishful thinking. Ain't nobody showering. People jump straight into the pool.
A pool is a giant chlorine bath. If a shower right before jumping in would make a difference someone would need to not have showered for multiple days in advance. Which is a bigger problem by itself.
It's a giant non issue and you're grasping at straws.
Is there any data to show that the amount of extra dirt potential is actually enough to worry about? Seems like only a fraction of the people using the pool would be wearing them, and the end result would be no worse than a child who sneezed a booger in it.
Idk man, I understand the point you’re trying to make, but it all seems like thinly veiled bullshit to me (the law, not your words).
No one showers before going in a public pool. You are right that it would be hygenic but it's not done by anyone. Furthermore elderly wear long sleaved swimsuits that are functionally the same as a birkini. The only difference is the hair covering. A hair covering improves hygiene of a public pool by not having stray hairs floating around in the same way food workers are required to wear hair nets.
Yes? No? Maybe?
Do you know what they’re made of?
Without looking it up?
Cause I sure as hell don’t
Of course I looked it up, I'm not about to get on here and spew bullshit like some ignorant jerkwad.
I'm not sure they ever empty most pools do they? They just continuously filter the water and keep adding chemicals?
He's saying if someone adds 10 gallons of chlorine instead of 5 depending on amount of water the pool holds...
Which shouldn't happen. The guy owns a hot tub and is extrapolating that to pool water maintenance. You test the water every few days and see exactly where your levels are, and you know how much of what chemicals you need to add.
Draining and heating pools has zero to do with a burkini. I think he just wants to argue the more fabric = more risk for contaminants introduced but went about it all the wrong way.
The sheer amount of fabric
It doesn’t make sense even from a hygiene perspective, it’s just racism because no one has banned surfers and their wetsuits.
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.
That’s exactly the same in Italy, freedom of religion is constitutionally protected. So either there’s something the article is not reporting, ie they are forbidding praying on the pavements of the street blocking the pedestrian circulation (which I promise you does happen), or the ban will simply be vetoed by the court.
Normally these things are about the call to prayer, not the actual praying. This does seem to be being reported as the actual praying though.
Public praying in areas which cause obstruction could potentially be justified under the public safety exception of the ECHR.
If only there was a way to find 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.
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.
Who knew electing fascists would lead to fundamental freedoms of minorities being removed?
FIFY
The amount of hate and ignorance ITT is staggering. Do better Lemmy, please
Lemmy has passed it's golden moment now that enough regular Redditors made if over.
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.
How about ban all prayers?
How about we invest in properly educating children so we won't need to worry about religion anymore?
Religion is not necessarily a lack of education, perhaps there is a correlation where you live but it's quite insulting to suggest this is universal
It seems to be, on the planet I live on. It's literally trying to explain things with magic and imaginary creatures.
You're being willfully reductive... religion is not only a cosmogony, it is also (and often dominantly) a set of rites and laws. People have always been educated and religious. But then that varies locally and I don't hope to invalidate your experience by stating that
I'm sure you're a good person, and I don't have much against religion as a concept, but on average it's not a force that i consider positive for humanity, and religious establishment is very easily corrupted in every possible way.
Sounds like communism. Or Navalny, but he is busy being corpse.
What are you even trying to do with this comment?
I mentioned communism for obvious reasons and mentioned Navalny because incerease in education funding was part of his programme. And that he was killed.
how about not banning any prayers since banning freedoms is never a good idea
Ok. Then removing state funding and subsidies of all religions.
why?
churches often are used for the public good though whether it's food banks or shelters...
Wow. You went from 1.socialist to 2.liberal
You're gonna have to pick one...
"Taxes should not be wasted" is now socialist instead of liberal?
and no, I am free to have my own Opinon on Stuff. I don't have to "pick one Team".
On this point, I’m on your team.
Secular state
hmmm.... no ? you understand that would hurt many people ?
Ok. Then removing state funding and subsidies of all religions.
That's reasonable and should be the default. No special treatment, but no special restrictions either. That's only fair.
Are mosques and churches state funded in Italy?
Dunno. But they are in Russia. Fuck Putin.
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.
Isn't this unconstitutional?
It's in italy, not the US.
Because the US is the only country with a constitution, amirite fellas?
Italy has a constitution, as far as I know most countries do
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_constitutions
I don't know a whole lot about Italy, but being European i'd think they must have a similar baseline as other European countries.
Those laws mainly revolve around trade. There is the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) but that's separate to EU membership. The relevent text is:
So 9.2 probably applies but it's subject to limitations in local law if they are deemed necessary to democracy and/or public safety. I doubt either of those could be reasonably argued, but they would have to be argued in court.
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
Who said anything about the US?
Christianity did this.
Why are the Guardian and the Observer becoming aware of this fact that happened a month ago?