Al Jazeera recently carried a feel good story about Sicily, focussing on the city of Palermo, where Sicilians, according to this article, have welcomed Muslim migrants, who soon feel right at home because a thousand years ago Muslims ruled the island for all of 200 years. We are asked to believe that “Sicilians have an affinity for the Islamic world in their DNA.”
Read the story HERE.
“The sound of about two dozen children practicing Qur’an recitations fills the otherwise empty Islamic Cultural Center of Via Roma in Palermo, Italy.‘Two break out of the group and start playing hide-and-seek between a curtain that separates the children’s section from the rest of the centre.“They are quickly ushered back to their place by Imam Sehab Uddin.The scene is set: Muslim children, harmless and inoffensive (with two sweetly “playing hide-and-seek”), practicing their Qur’an recitations. Islam has come to Sicily, but who could object to this scene of innocent study?
“Home to more than 25,000 immigrants, many from majority Muslim countries such as Bangladesh, Palermo, has become a symbol of multiculturalism and integration that has been built on Sicily’s history.“A Muslim stronghold for about 200 years between the ninth and 11th centuries, the Mediterranean island – of which Palermo is the capital – still bears the marks of Islamic history both physically and culturally.“Ahmad Abd Al Majid Macaluso, the Imam of Palermo, walks through the San Giovanni degli Eremiti monastery and points to a discoloured section of wall.“He explains that was where the Mihrab used to be, the semi-circular carving in a mosque’s wall that faces the Kaaba in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam.“Every church here used to be a mosque which used to be a synagogue which used to be a church which was a mosque,” he explains. “This is the history of Sicily.”
Not quite. Some churches, very few, may have been mosques a thousand years ago, and before that, were either churches or synagogues. In Al Majid Macaluso’s telling, they appear to have begun as mosques (“which used to be a church which was a mosque”). That’s the impression he wishes to give, but it is not true; the churches and synagogues preceded the arrival of Muslims, and their mosques, in Sicily, by more than half a millennium.
“Imam Macaluso thinks that these symbols, like the Qur’anic inscription on the Cathedral of Palermo, the Arab-Norman architecture that dots the landscape, and the culture of the people make it a bit easier for Muslim immigrants to adjust to their new home.
How does the “culture of the people” make it “easier for Muslim immigrants” to adjust to their new home”? He doesn’t tell us what that culture consists of, so we have no way to judge the truth or falsehood of his remark.
“Surely, for Muslims that come here from other countries, Sicily is a happy exception because there is a natural disposition for unity, to recognize a brotherhood with Muslims, Jews and other religions,” Macaluso said.
Imam Macaluso claims there is in Sicily a “natural disposition for unity, to recognize a brotherhood with Muslims.” No evidence of this “natural disposition…to recognize a brotherhood with Muslims” is offered. Not a single non-Muslim Sicilian, save for Mayor Orlando himself, is quoted. And if there were this “brotherhood,” why has Sicily shifted poitically so much to the right, supporting the anti-immigrant parties of Cinque Stelle and the Lega Salvini? Why do Sicilians agree with Matteo Salvini’s policy of not allowing Muslim migrants coming from Libyan ports to disembark anywhere in Italy? Shouldn’t the Sicilians be welcoming them with open arms?
“Sicilians differ from the rest of Europe in this natural disposition for diversity. Sicilians have this affinity for the Islamic world in their DNA.”
This seems quite a stretch. The last Muslim stronghold in Sicily fell to the Christians in 1091; by 1282, there was not a single Muslim left in Sicily. There was no “natural disposition for diversity”, either among the Muslims, or among the Sicilians who threw off their rule. Yet we are being asked to believe in some quasi-genetic (“in their DNA”) “affinity for the Islamic world” in Sicily. How does this affinity display itself? Muslims ruled Sicily a thousand years ago, and finally, in bloody battles, they were driven out. How would that explain why they are –according to one imam and one mayor –made to feel welcome in Sicily today?
We are provided with the anecdotal evidence of exactly one Muslim, Masrur Rahim, “a slim 29-year-old originally from Bangladesh, who moved to Palermo when he was nine.”
“Now working at a travel agency in the city centre, Rahim credits the hospitality of Sicilians to their Islamic ancestry and multicultural past.’
“The connection you feel is the people, because they [the Muslims] have left something inside the people,” Rahim said. “They are completely different from the northerners. They are more friendly here, they accept people, it’s better than the other places of Italy, the northern places of Italy.”
If we are going to attribute the friendliness/warmth/hospitality of Sicilians to that Islamic blip in their distant past, rather than to the natural warmth of Italians (who outside Sicily never experienced Islamic rule), and even more of southern Italians (in many countries, not just in Italy, southerners are distinctly warmer than northerners), can we attribute other aspects of Sicilian culture, such as the Mafia, to that Islamic heritage? I doubt that Imam Macaluso would agree. But isn’t the Mafia’s practice of extortion, whereby people pay to be “protected” from the Mafia itself, likely based on the Jizyah payment Muslims exacted from dhimmis? Don’t the all-black outfits of Sicilian widows owe something to the niqab? And does not the delitto d’onore, the “honor crime” in which a Sicilian man may kill a female relative who has brought dishonor to the family, based on the “honor killings” in Islam?
“Imam Sehab Uddin also believes that there is a difference between the cultures of northern and southern Italy.”“Italy is like an apartment building,” he explains. “The people in the north are on the top floors and don’t talk to the people on the bottom floors [the south]. The people in the north, in cities like Padova and Venice, are scared of me. If I try to get their attention to ask them a question, they are scared of me. If I ask someone here, they answer and help me immediately.”
Could his warmer reception in the south be attributed simply to the fact that he is known to people in Sicily where he lives, and whose distinctive dialect he speaks? In the north, in Padova and Venice, he is a complete stranger, and if they are, as he claims, “scared” of him, surely he can think of the reason why that might be. Does he really need to be reminded of the almost 35,000 terror attacks world-wideby Muslims since 9/11?
“Patrizia Spallino, an Arabic language professor and director at the Office of Medieval Studies in Palermo, explains that the Tunisian Arabic that used to be spoken on the island over 1,000 years ago is still evident in the Sicilian dialect through places and everyday words.“The port neighborhood of Marsala in Palermo derives from the Arabic marsa Allah, meaning “port of God”.“This influence can also be seen in common Sicilian words like meskeen, from the Arabic miskeen, meaning someone who is poor or unfortunate.
What are a handful of Arabic words that have entered the Sicilian dialect meant to signify? That Muslims and Sicilian Christians get along swimmingly? Today, in the advanced West, among the Arabic words and expressions that have entered our languages in the last few decades are jihad, jizyah, dhimmi, fatwa, mufti, allahu akbar. Do those words, and the concepts behind them, suggest empathy, or enmity?
“Although this Arab influence is evident to someone who studies the language and knows the history, Spallino explains, most of the population is unaware of these links.“What is not lost on people, is what she calls the Mediterranean idea of hospitality.“The idea of hospitality, starting with Greece and the Arabs and then Byzantines … is sacred,” she says. “You do everything you can for hospitality. In Arab countries, when they invite you in [to their home] they get you a tea, something to eat, this is also very Sicilian.”
This “hospitality” among the Sicilians apparently must be attributed to the 200 years they endured under Arab rule, until they finally managed to drive the Arabs out, The Sicilians could not possibly have arrived at such displays of “hospitality” on their own. When Sicilians invite you to their houses, they give you “tea” and even “something to eat.” What a display –really quite modest –of hospitality. Surely this could only be the result of that Muslim Arab influence from a thousand years ago.
“But the reality of this hospitality has not been the same throughout Italy.“Over the past few years, Italy has seen several attacks against immigrants – the worst of which took place last year in the central Italian city of Macerata, where a man who ran in local elections under the far-right Lega party shot and injured six African migrants in a series of drive-by shootings.“In addition to these attacks, Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has taken a hard line against immigration, at times forbidding those who have been rescued in the Mediterranean to disembark at Italian ports.
Salvini, who rises ever higher in the opinion polls, is not being “inhospitable.” It’s the wrong word. For these migrants are not guests coming to have tea and sandwiches, and then leave. They are people who are coming to live, permanently, in your country, which is your home. They bring with them a culture antipathetic to your own, and a faith that teaches them to despise you and all other Unbelievers. Their presence is a very different kind of imposition.
Michael Copeland says
Macerata is where a Nigerian “migrant” drug dealer raped, killed, and dismembered Pamela Mastropietro, and dumped her body in suitcases. Her heart and liver were missing, presumed cannibalised, as is the practice with some Nigerians.
That is the background to the drive-by shooting of Africans in Macerata.
Leslie Fish says
This article is complete garbage. Any Sicilian who knows anything of their island’s history does *not* welcome the return of the Arabs. What they have in their DNA is the result of two centuries of Arab conquerors raping their women, children and livestock — which the Sicilians did not and do not appreciate. Regardless of what politicians and their media flacks may say, Sicily does not welcome the Muslim “refugees”, and the citizens will take their own methods to be rid of them.
Demsci says
Wow. Grim but great humor; “The Arab conquerors raping their women, children and livestock”
Demsci says
But as far as I understand Leslie, you mean that what the 29 year old Bangladeshi Imam was saying is the “complete garbage”. Which I gathered was exposed well by Hugh, in a very informative way, with a good analysis to take away.
In the movie “True Romance” there was the compelling discussion between Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken. In their roles as a man interrogated by a mafia boss (Walken) with gunmen to his side. The doomed prisoner (although in his own home and he “knew it”) decided to enrage the boss, who was a proud Sicilian. The discussion of course was in America, but the boss was clearly Sicilian.
He told the boss that he, the boss, was a “Moor”, descended from Moors, whose males indeed gave their DNA to so many Sicilian women that the DNA of the Sicilians became Majority Moorish. (You have to see the movie I guess).
The boss listened smiling for a considerable time but then indeed became so enraged (as the captive had wanted) and shot him (killing him instantly, without torture).
I always wondered whether the film Makers (under Quentin Tarantino) somehow expressed historical truth here or not.
The Arab Occupation was between # 824 and 1091. But it is well known that for a long time the new Norman overlords ruled over this combination of Latins (Catholics like themselves), Greek speaking Greek Orthodox people (who were the majority under previous Byzantine rule) and many remaining Muslims. These rulers were called “Eclectic” and very tolerant to all faiths (there must have been Jews too by the way, but not much).
gravenimage says
Leslie, it is not just complete garbage–it is Islamic propaganda. This is what Hugh Fitzgerald is pointing out.
No Muzzies Here says
Affinity does not reside in DNA. We don’t inherit stupid ideas from our ancestors.
What it is, is liberalism and naivete’. The Sicilians are friendly and welcoming, and have no idea of what it will mean for their children and grandchildren to live surrounded by people who are taught to hate them as part of their religion, and who feel it’s OK to pick off a passing woman and rape her and then throw her away.
GreekEmpress says
+1
The Turks oppressed Greece for 400 years.
I can guarantee I have no affinity for Islam in my DNA.
Heidi says
and they are still occupying part of Cyprus.
gravenimage says
Grimly true, Heidi.
cyrus says
instead you have affinity with us from southern Italy, my city has a Greek name (nea polis = new city and before that parthenope as the goddess of the Olympus)
gravenimage says
True, No Muzzies Here and GreekEmpress.
Demsci says
Of course “No muzzles here’. The DNA of Arab Muslims, no matter how high or low, does not play any role in the behavior of Sicilians, I’m sure.
And the other day, by the way, I learned that the Turks, who may or may not have left much DNA in the oppressed Greek population, themselves for 93 % descend, not from Central Asian Turks, but from the ancient people who made up the Christian Byzantine Empire, in Anatolia but also in Greece, before Manzikert 1071. So now we can say that “Turks have Christian DNA?” And the Christians had “Hittite or Galatian DNA” etc? Of course not!!!
And I for one could never, just by the look of it, discern a Greek from a Turk anyway.
Niemoller says
Every normal Sicilian says the Mafia has been nothing but a parasitic plague on Sicily, and the same will be said soon about Islam. Why people go out of their way to commit group self-harm is beyond me, like by importing Islam, sharia and jihad where there was none.
I think it may be only the politicasters’ fault, who sell their country out for a song and a villa, but they get elected by hook and crook nonetheless. There is a strong cognitive dissonance between those who people think they are electing and who they get.
Richard says
Your statement that “Every normal Sicilian says the Mafia has been nothing but a parasitic plague on Sicily” is ridiculous. During the worldwide depression of the 1930s, Don Chiccihio Cuccia, il capu di tutti cappi, sold everything he owned and emptied his bank accounts to buy food for the impoverished Sicilians who had lost everything. Decades later, Don Calligero Vicini (my own spelling on these men) who had personally killed over thirty men took daily walks around his garden, during which anyone who wanted to could join him and tell him their problems, which he would immediately call in someone to take care of. These people loved him! He would have been honestly shocked if someone had accused him of being a criminal. In America, we have Gabriel “Al” Capone in Chicago, who paid to have soup kitchens set up to feed thousands of people who, by their own testimony, would otherwise have starved. Sicilians aside, Guy MacAfee owned the Mayor of Los Angeles and the Governor of California and when he left for Las Vegas, a newspaper ran an headline lamenting his leaving, saying that under his rule the state had never been more cleanly and efficiently run.
Sicily and Calabria were made an independent kingdom a thousand years ago by Pope Gregory VII, meaning they could never be forcibly absorbed by another nation. “Italy” absorbed them illegally under the House of Savoy in the 1800s, which promptly took all papal lands there, as well as the Shroud of Turin. For a Sicilian to accept Italy as a legal government would be akin to a Frenchman to go to the Nazis for help during the occupation of France in World War II. Mafia is a philanthropic and patriotic organization. Yes, the Italians would call it criminal because it does not help their criminality. Under the Mafia dons, everyone who can pay pays what in effect are taxes (“wetting the beak”) according to their ability to pay. Those who are in poverty cannot pay anything are helped and protected to the same degree at those who paid the most. All are treated the same, in effect as children or brothers in the don’s family. Unlike the police, they are require to help one another and if anyone knows who is responsible for a crime it is necessary to go them to go to the mafia to help whomever has been harmed. But not go to the Italian government. The accused are in effect tried, however. Mafia has no prisons, so they can either punish by beatings or execution. When someone is found guilty of a capital offense, they are killed and their body placed on a three-legged stool such as witnesses are to take in Italian courts (probably three legs for the Holy Trinity, but that is a guess). Then the reason for their execution is placed in their moth as if they were testifying to it: a hand is cut off and put in their mouth for stealing; their genitals are placed in their mouth for rape, a flower in the mouth if they insulted a decent woman, a bird in the mouth for informing – from which we get the term “stool pigeon”. If one is a traitor, the person is strangled, but if possible, they are laid on the ground and hogtied with the noose around their neck being tide to their hands and feet so in effect they strangle themselves as did he first traitor, Judas; ‘He went out and hanged himself”. Under no circumstances are Sicilians to go to the legal authorities. Sparta had its hero in a young boy who kept silent while a fox he had stolen and hid under his cloak chewed its way into his heart while he was being questioned about it. Sicily has the story of a young man who pretended to be a deaf mute for the rest of his life to avoid testifying in murder trial. Another occasion was of a man who ran away during a mass shooting, only to trip over the feet of a police officer. He said he didn’t know there was any shooting going on. He thought it was thunder and he was running to get home before it rained because he didn’t have an umbrella.
gravenimage says
What sickening whitewash of the Mafia.
Don Chiccihio Cuccia himself was involved in a massacre of Sicilian peasants when they didn’t vote the way he wanted. The idea that he was universally loved is just grotesque.
Why don’t you try your hand at whitewashing Islam while you are at it?
Niemoller says
Richard probably thinks Hamas and ISIS are great examples of summary justice by “government” much appreciated by their subject peoples, lol.
wtd says
Several years ago I recall reading a comment over at DhimmiWatch which suggested the origins of the term ‘mafia’ and it’s relation to Islam. I kept notes, but, alas, did not save a link to the author of that comment.
The suggested history was quite plausible & pasted below…
and
Shariah justice does not recognize the rights of non-believers as equal to those of believers.
The Sicilians knew they would NEVER find justice with their Muhammedan overlords.
[snip]
These groups, which later became known as clans or families, developed their own system for justice and retribution, carrying out their actions in secret. By the 19th century, small private armies known as “mafie” took advantage of the frequently violent, chaotic conditions in Sicily and extorted protection money from landowners.
The term “‘mafia’ originated from a Sicilian-Arabic slang expression that means “acting as a protector against the arrogance of the powerful” .
Omerta mirrors a lot of the behaviors we recognize today, with the purging of any terminology from law enforcement and national security vocabulary which may negatively reflect on Islam or Muslims – a strict adaptation of shariah.
Now compare to MEMRI’s “EGYPTIAN-GERMAN SCHOLAR DR. HAMED ABDEL-SAMAD ANALYZES “THE BIRTH DEFECT OF ISLAM”
and fast forward the video to 4 minute & 56 seconds…
https://www.memri.org/tv/egyptian-german-scholar-dr-hamed-abdel-samad-analyzes-birth-defect-islam
at which he discusses the term, “mafia” :
gravenimage says
Good post.
Robert_k says
The mafia and protection money (Jizya) comes from Sicily, Does that come from Islam?
Robert_k says
Mafia(Arabic Mahias bold man)
Paul J says
Yep, islam’s contribution to Sicilian culture.
gravenimage says
It likely does, Robert.
mortimer says
Response to Robert’s query:
Mafia Arabic Etymology
The Mafia developed out of Islamic pirate gangs that extorted jizyya. The Sicilians copied the Arabs’ methods.
Possible etymologies from ARABIC are:
– mu’afa = safety, ‘protection’ (‘Submit to Islam and you will be safe’ – Aslim, taslam)
– mahyas = aggressive boasting, bragging[5]
– marfud = rejected (considered to be the most plausible derivation); marfud developed into marpiuni (swindler) to marpiusu, and finally mafiusu
Rev. G says
And here I always though it was a shortened form of “ma familia”.
Giacomo Latta says
The word ‘mafia’ is an acronym which stands for ‘movimento anti-francese’ (anti-French movement) due to hostilities between the French and the Italians. Parts of today’s France were once under Italian control and vice-versa.
gravenimage says
Giacomo, this is a much later claim.
Martin says
JUNE 04 2019 – ITALY – Napoli – Garibaldi square – Eid al fitr – Muslim public prayer
gravenimage says
Disgusting–these supremacist “prayer” sessions with Muslims aggressively taking over the streets is happening all over the West.
Guy Forester says
Thanks for posting this Hugh. I have Sicilian ancestors, so I follow the happenings in Italy and Sicily. What you did not mention as of yet is that there is concern over the migrant influx for a variety of reasons. One of the big areas being investigated is the role of the Mafia in the influx. It seems that at least some of the do gooder NGO’s that provide shelter and services for the migrants are actually front organizations for the Mafia. These fronts collect money from the taxpayers of Italy and from charity groups. The Mafia profits handsomely. Meanwhile, the Sicilians are desperately trying to get rid of the Mafia and similar groups.
People left Sicily by the boat load (Palermo was a main departure city) to escape poverty, lack of opportunity, and the “black hand.”
gravenimage says
You are right, Guy:
“‘Migrants are more profitable than drugs’: how the mafia infiltrated Italy’s asylum system”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/01/migrants-more-profitable-than-drugs-how-mafia-infiltrated-italy-asylum-system
Martin says
ITALY – SICILY – PALERMO – Eid al Adha 2018
Lydia Church says
They are in the perfect position for me to try out my new Italian boots!!!
Perfect… right there…. good… now hold it steady…!
Splat!
: D
The country of Italy is shaped like a boot, and that’s exactly what it should give them…
Viva Salvini!
Just for that I’m going to have an expresso in his honor!
gravenimage says
🙂
jewdog says
The Normans, Viking invaders, conquered Sicily in the eleventh century (the same Normans of 1066 in Britain) and ended Islamic rule. There followed a long period of unity, strength and prosperity under Roger, a Norman ruler who is known even to this day as “The Good Count”. After a generation or so, the Norman rulers converted to Christianity. Eventually, Sicily and Calabria came under Spanish rule, and in the fifteenth century they brought the Inquisition to southern Italy. Despite resistance from the more moderate Italian clergy, the Jews were expelled and with them the existing source of banking funds. As a result, southern Italy declined economically in relation to the north and has never fully recovered.
cyrus says
what you write about the impoverishment of Sicily and the south is completely false. it was Garibaldi who brought poverty to southern Italy. before 1860 the south was rich and the north poor, in fact those who emigrated were all from the north, the reign of the two Sicilies was an advanced state with several primates
http://www.neoborbonici.it/portal/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=227&Itemid=137
Lydia Church says
It seems to me like they are just trying to impose their ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ narrative upon the unsuspecting Sicilian civilians! Along with their false propaganda about the mosques… which I’m glad are churches now!
gravenimage says
Do Sicilians have an affinity for the Islamic world in their DNA? (Part I)
………………..
Just grotesque. Firstly, no one has “an affinity” for a savage creed in their DNA–that is not how DNA works.
Then, if Sicilians *did* have some kind of genetic memory of Islam, it would be of Muslims conquering and abusing them, and their having to expel the Muslim invaders.
The problem with Sicilians is that they have embraced “political correctness” like so many other Westerners.
Eric Jones says
I have worked over the years with a number of men whose families are from southern Italy. All of them have told me that they have some Arab blood in their gene pool from Arab invasion in southern Italy. Many Italians in NYC are from southern Italian origin. These men are Catholic Americans. They are good guys. Peace to them.
Eric
.
mortimer says
Mohammed offered ‘protection’ to those he wished to exploit and subjugate as tributaries. “Aslim, taslam’ (‘Submit to Islam and you will be safe’)
The Mafia uses the same method of extortion as Islam. Extortion is right in Koran 9.29, and some scholars consider it the TURNING POINT of the Koran when Mohammed sent his thugs out to collect booty and tribute from unwilling people at the point of a sword. The Koran has a chapter in it called ‘THE BOOTY’.
Do you need further evidence that the Mafia copied Islam?
KFR says
Mauling Salvini? Salvini an Arab? In fact Arab’s are the cross Euro+Africans
Beijing Biden says
Re: “Does he really need to be reminded of the almost 35,000 terror attacks world-wideby [sic] Muslims since 9/11?”
One small correction: There have been over* 35k DEADLY terror attacks since 9/11. Keep in mind the should-be-famous counter kept at https://www.thereligionofpeace.com only counts attacks with at least one fatality. So acid attacks, bombs that only cause injuries, acts of intimidation, foiled terror plots, etc., are not even counted on the list. If they were, the tally would probably be twice as large.
*Due to a successful 2019 Ramadan bombathon over the past few weeks
gravenimage says
True, BB. The only Jihad terror attacks counted are those with fatalities.
David Conell says
La Cosa Nostra is the DNA left by Islam to Sicily.
Rev. G says
The big lie is active everywhere. Even our conservative newspaper here is running articles like this, recently it was interviews with muslim women who wear the hijab because it is “freeing”. Nowhere in sight was counterpoint from muslim women in the Middle East being persecuted for not wanting the “freedom” the hijab provides them.
gravenimage says
Yes–we get this whitewash of Islam from almost everywhere now.
UNCLE VLADDI says
The Mafia itself was on Sicily created to fight islamic fire with similar fire when the prelates of the Catholic church Submitted for being allowed to continue to exist and of course also for money – which is why even today’s Mafiosis burn photos of saints at their inaugurations. The rebel Princes of S icily literally took to the hills and became like Italian Robin Hoods. Today’s muslim-smuggling mafia descendants would do well to remember their true origins and honour their princely ancestors by resisting the lure of lucre and defending the West from the islamic scourge – in stead of pandering it it just because they are now mutual crime-gangs.
UNCLE VLADDI says
Re: “Imam Macusloso” (i.e: “Immaculoso”) – is that a parody account, or what?! Anyway, I think the native Sicilians have more of an affinity for the Vikings who eventually rescued them from the islamic scourge.
Giacomo Latta says
Two young Muslims playing hide-and-seek? More likely seek-and-slit-throat!