Some good news from Italy via AKI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
Rome, 5 Jan. (AKI) - Souad Sbai, a member of Italy's government-appointed body on Muslim affairs, the Consulta, welcomed Friday the proposal of interior minister Giuliano Amato to control foreign funding of mosques. "Finally. We had been asking for years controls on money for mosques in our country," said Sbai, who is also the leader of the Confederation of Moroccans in Italy. "We have always warned the government and public opinion that the nature of foreign funds for some mosques is unclear."There are approximately 1.2 million Muslims in Italy, of whom 20,000 are Italian converts.
The Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII), the largest Muslim group in Italy, and other Muslim organisations have invested two million euros in the past few years to buy 13 mosques across Italy - sparking allegations that part of the money came from fundamentalist foreign groups.
miss sbai, as all the other non-terrorist muslims counts zero. I am even suprised a news-wire registered her commet. In Italy we heard nothing of that.
One wonders how effective the oversight will be, given who is heading it! Why is Islam expanding so rapidly in this the most Catholic of countries that I have ever visited?
the oversight will count for nothing as long as there is a leftist government. Apparently only the right is not indoctrinated with multi-culti mumbo jumbo
LoneWolf,
It is an invasion. They have 1.2 million, but on 20K are converted Italians? That is roughly 1.7%. Heck that could be a rounding error.
The problem in Italy is the one festering in the rest of EUrabia and starting in the US. We simply let them migrate here, then not assimilate, then they get all radical.
The US does more to keep out Cubans fleeing Castro on boats to the US than it does terrorists migrating here to kill us.
It is all assinine.
And the American government?
Why has it not read Saudi Arabia the riot act? Why haven't the hate-filled pamphlets collected at mosques around the country that were built and are now maintained by Saudi money, collected by Rice or Bush and put out on a table at the White House, and then the Arab ambassadors all invited over to see this "Special Exhibit," an exhibit to which representatives of all the major networks and the major newspapers here and abroad will be invited, and urged to cover?
And then why does Bush or someone else not have a little private meeting with the enraged Saudi Ambassador, to tell him that there is much more iin that sort of "Special Exhibit" -- which could of course tour the country -- if he doesn't stop funding the mosques and madrasas in this country, doesn't allow Saudi money to pay for Muslim missionaries in the prisons and to prey on the psychically as well as economically marginal.
If the American government had a mind to do it, it could bring the Saudi government around in no time.
But it doesn't because so many former government officials, and those who listen to them, are directly or indirectly on the Saudi or other Muslim dole. Who pays Eugene Bird, and pays for the ads of the "Council for the National Interest" that is virtually identical in its views to the Saudi government? Who pays for "consultancy" by Raymond Close, or James Akins? Who pays for that magazine about the Middle East, full of Arab propgaganda, that another ex-diplomat, Andrew Kilgore, runs? Who pays or has paid fees to Brent Scowcroft? To George McGovern? What Presidential libraries have been battening on Saudi and other Arab money? Who has received those million-doller lecture fees in Kuwait, or from that Arab-funded lecturership at the Fletcher School (hint: Bush, Clinton). Who has been getting what?
Ask yourself why since 1973 there has been not a move toward decreasing, through the simple device of taxes, demand for oil and gasoline? Why for thirty years did American energy policy consist of trusting "our staunch ally Saudi Arabia" to keep prices low, when it never happened, and never could have happened? Why was no one aware until the last year or two of what, inevitably, OPEC oil revenues would fund? Why was Prince Bandar the only foreigner allowed in on the plans for invading Iraq? Why today do we worry about what the Sunni Arabs want, and believe that we have a duty to remain in Iraq to protect those Sunnis (i.e., keep the "catastrophe of civil war" from happening)?
And that is just the beginnning of the list of questions that need to be asked.
Holy War on the Home Front (book) by Harvy Kushner
It's not just what's being said during Islamic services and sermons that reflect the extremist influence in American's Islamic institutions. The youngest members of Islamic society are being exposed to intolerance and hate in the Islamic religious schools from the earliest grades on. In 1997, there were over a hundred Islamic day schools and more than a thousand Sunday or weekend schools in the United States, many of them affiliated with mosques, all expanding the reach of Wahhabi doctrine.
For years, mainstream America wasn't watching what was taught in Islamic religious schools, but 9/11 put these learning institutions in the spotlight. The USA Patriot Act allowed the government to look into mosques for the first time. What investigators found was very disturbing. The Saudis, either directly or through intermediary groups such as the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), are pouring "truckloads" of oil money into American mosques and schools, New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer told a congressional subcommittee. "In exchange, they demand that these mosques and schools toe the Wahhabi line. Saudi textbooks that preach violence against infidels can be found in some American Muslim schools." [3]
In February 2003, the American Jewish Committee and the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace released an analysis of ninety-three textbooks published by the Saudi Ministry of Education and used between 1999 and 2002. The books, American Jewish Committee Director David A. Harris told a congressional committee, "reveal a widespread presence of contempt towards Western civilization and followers of the other religions." [4]
According to the study, the teachings include:
Among the passages cited in the study is this one from a Saudi tenth-grade literary study book:
The Muslims will never get Palestine, or other [regions] back without holy Jihad by which faithful throngs will march and fight, so that God's word shall be the highest. And I do not think there will be among us one who will refrain from answering such a faithful call. [6]
Another Arabic literature book for tenth graders teaches "There are two happy endings for Jihad fighters in God's cause: victory or martyrdom." [7]
It is of little comfort that, in defense of the books, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told CBS's 60 Minutes that "85 percent of what was being taught in the schools was not hateful." [8]
It isn't surprising that Islamic schools in the United States use Saudi textbooks. If fact, the textbook publisher, IQRA International Educational Foundation of Chicago, receives financial support from a Saudi foundation. But hate speech doesn't have to be imported. Investigations by several newspapers show that some of the most troubling books are produced right in the United States. In 2003 the New York Daily News took a look at the textbooks with titles like What Islam Is All About and Mercy to Mankind, which were widely used in the city schools and were described by Islamic educational experts as among the most popular. [9]
The newspaper found that fifth and sixth graders at one school were being taught that "the Jews killed their own prophets and disobeyed Allah," while at another elementary school, students reading from the What Is Islam All About learned that "the Christians worship statues." [10] The book which the publisher, the Islamic Foundation of North America of Queens, New York, says has sold more the forty thousand copies, also says that many Jews and Christians lead "decadent and immoral lives." [11]
The Washington Post found similar troubling textbooks and teachings at the Islamic academies in the Washington area. One eleventh-grade textbook says that a sign of the "Day of Judgement will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind talking trees that say: Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him. [12] Students are also taught in Islamic studies that it is good to dislike Christians, Jews, and Shiite Muslims.
There are many other possibly troubling links between Islamic education and terrorism. The Web sit of the Council of Islamic Schools in North America (CISNA) contains a link to the Muslim Student Association, one of the more that two dozen charities and foundations listed in a January 2004 Senate Finance Committee request to the Internal Revenue Service for confidential tax and financial records. The inquiry is part of the probe into the alleged ties between the groups and terror organizations.
Another academic organization raising concerns is the Institute or Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America (IIASA). The institute, in Fairfax, Virginia, was established in 1998 and is affiliated with Al-Iman Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which the Saudi Institute considers a conduit for Saudi-based hate literature in the United States. [13]
The IIASA teaches Wahhabism to over four hundred students, and is "beyond reform," Washington, D.C., Saudi Institute Director Ali al-Ahmed said in 2002. "It practices religions and gender apartheid. Female students are not allowed in the library except for four hours each week, when men are not around. Classes are segregated and women are taught through closed-circuit television." [14]
[4][5] http://appropriations.senate.gov/subcommittees/record.cfm?id=216694
[6][7][8]http://www.edume.org/reports/10/toc.htm
[9][10][11] http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/71199p-66134c.html
[12] http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,46610,00.html
[13][14] http://www.defenddemocracy.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=155715
I should add that, that if you own the book, the above links might be different than in your book as I had to replace a few different links because the old ones were no longer available.
This link is back from May so it probably has been posted here before.
This is a Saudi textbook. (After the intolerance was removed.)
In short, unlike the US government (check the last two-three posts), the Italian government is taking serious steps to check the Wahhabi creep in Italian mosques and to support moderates such as Mr.Sbai. Incidentally, there are 60 million Italians. 20,000 converts are nothing: apart from the 30 million Italians who go to Catholic Mass every Sunday, the largest group of converts in Italy are the Jehova's Witnesses - getting on for 600,000, according to their possibly unreliable figures, and we have anything from half a million to a million Eastern Orthodox (Christian) immigrants. Even the tiny native religious minorities, Jews (35,000) and Waldensians (40,000) are larger than the number of Italian converts to Islam. In America, the first native convert has just taken his oath on the Qur'an in the House of Representatives - well, the Italian parliament has prostitutes, perverts and criminals, but a native Muslim is not yet in sight, I believe.