Italy: "The mosque destruction is sign of spiraling Islamophobia in many European countries"

*  The soldiers of Allah are feeling  the ‘backlash’ from the ‘far right, anti-immigrant Northern League’ and see the bringing down of an illegal mosque in Verona as an attack on Islam, naturally, and now all the good Muslims must ‘live in fear’…

Update: Oriana Fallaci Square

* Long live Oriana Fallaci!

* The only question that should be asked here is how and why  Muslims came to occupy this building and use it as a mosque without ever paying a penny for it. This howling and whingeing over illegal usage which is now stopped should be ridiculed. Instead, the lefty media in cahoots with the usual Muslim organizations cry crocodile tears over a property that was never rightfully theirs.

* Update from Norway: Fallaci on display

“We need to give this opportunity to Italian journalist Fallaci, too, even if we do not like her ideas.”

An exhibition dedicated to the late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, known in her later years for a fiercely anti-Islamic stance, has gone on display at Nobel Peace Center exhibition hall in Norway’s capital city of Oslo.

Islam in Europe

 

Whole lotta whinging going on:

Italy Rightists Raze Verona Mosque

By  Hadi Yahmid, IOL Correspondent   Â

“[The mosque destruction] reinforces Muslim fears of seeing the League in the ruling coalition,” Ali Abu Shwaima.

ROME — Italy’s far-right, anti-immigrant Northern League party has started its mission in the new government with bringing down a mosque in the northern city of Verona.“[The mosque destruction] reinforces Muslim fears of seeing the League in the ruling coalition,” Ali Abu Shwaima, the head of Milan-based Islamic Centre, told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, May 24.

Bulldozers brought down last week a building housing a Muslim prayer room in the city.

“I never felt at ease with this mosque,” Elisonder Antonneli, the head of Verona city council, said.

“This place will be turned into a park and a car parking space and will be named after (Italian writer) Oriana Fallaci.”

Fallaci, who died in 2006, was notorious for anti-Islam stances.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the far-right writer published a book entitled “Rage and Pride” in which she ridiculed the Noble Qur’an.

She has also authored another book “The Force of Reason” in which she warned that Europe was turning into “an Islamic province, an Islamic colony” and that “to believe that a good Islam and a bad Islam exist goes against all reason.”

The Northern League has four ministers in Silovio Berlusconi’s government, including the portfolio of the Interior.

The League grabbed 8 percent of the vote in last month’s general elections, securing Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition a comfortable majority in the parliament.

The party has nearly doubled its parliamentary strength from 4.5 percent two years ago.

The Northern League is widely accused of racism with many critics calling it the BNP of Italy, a reference to the British right-wing party.

Its election campaign played on issues such as immigration crime and economic and cultural fears from immigration.

* Italy’s ‘Right Wingers’ ( a common slur on those who kept their faculties intact) see things a bit more realistically:

Guess Who’s Last?

Our Swedish correspondent LN sent me this image of a Lega Nord poster from the recent Italian election campaign.    

The text reads: “Guess who’s last? For rights on: housing, jobs, and health care.”

Look at those delightfully racist and xenophobic caricatures! No wonder the Italians voted in droves for the Lega Nord.

And the Muslim guy is holding a — gasp! — scimitar.

Islamophobia!

Thanks to Gates of Vienna

 

Hard Time

Abu Shwaima, the Muslim leader, said Italian Muslims will face hard times under the far-right league.

“We believe the life of Italian Muslims will get more complicated,” he said.

He said Muslims in the city of Verona used to find spiritual comfort at the razed mosque.

“The mosque destruction is sign of spiraling Islamophobia in many European countries,” he said.

There are nearly 20,000 Muslims in Verona.

“I used to pray in the mosque for years,” an Italian Muslim in Verona told IOL, requesting anonymity.

“But this Friday I went to the mosque for prayers but I could not as it was razed.

“We live in a state of anticipation and fear after the mosque was destroyed and we want Arab and Muslim governments to pile pressures on Italy to stop anti-immigrant and anti-Islam policies.”

Abu Shwaima, the Muslim leader, has a similar message.

“We want to tell the Muslim world that mosques’ construction in Italy is almost a mission impossible.

* Well,  perhaps you should go whining to your Muslim brothers in the ME or in Indonesia where churches are regularly razed, of where no churches are allowed to be built….

“Except for the Milan-based Islamic Center and the Rome mosque, there are no real mosques in Italy.”

Last November, former Italian deputy Education Minister and League member Mariella Mazzetto angered Muslims after parading a pig on the site of a planned mosque in the northern city of Padua.

Two months earlier, League senator Roberto Calderoli called for a “Pig Day” protest against the mosque construction in the northern city of Bologna.

In 2006, protesters left a pig’s head at a mosque building site in the central Italian city of Tuscany.

Italy has a Muslim population of some 1.2 million, including 20,000 reverts, according to unofficial estimates.

More from Islam Online:

 

• Italy Muslims Under Siege
• Berlusconi’s Anti-Islam Deputy
• Racist Italian Senator Irks Muslims
• Italian Muslim Hand to Berlusconi
• Italian Muslims Fear Anti-veil Campaign