SHARE
COPY LINK

ISLAM

Italy aims to integrate Muslims and shape ‘Italian Islam’

Italy's Interior Minister Angelino Alfano on Tuesday established a council for relations with the country's Muslims, an advisory body the government hopes will help the minority to better integrate.

Italy aims to integrate Muslims and shape 'Italian Islam'
People pray during a celebration of Eid al-Fitr marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan in a gymnasium in Saluzzo, near Turin in July last year. Photo: Marco Bertorello/AFP

The council, made up of academics and experts in Islamic culture and religion, will be tasked with coming up with proposals and recommendations on integration issues based on “respect and cooperation”, the ministry said in a statement.

Alfano said he wanted “a community with all those who – while from different countries, cultures, religions and traditions – intend to contribute to the peaceful development and prosperity of our country, in full compliance with our laws and our Christian and humanistic tradition.”

The body will keep the government in the loop on Islamic issues in Italy and help shape “Italian Islam,” the statement added.

Experts put the number of Muslims in Italy at over one million, most of whom are immigrants, plus a small number of converts.

Some of those converts are already striving to better integrate Muslims, with an Italian businessman talking to The Local last year about his challenges in trying to create what would be Europe’s first Islamic University in Lecce, a city in the heart of Puglia’s Salento region.

Read more: How Islamic college plan has split Italian town

Alfano, head of the New Centre Right (NCD) party, sparked controversy following the deadly attacks in Paris last November by saying the government would crack down on illegal Muslim places of worship in the fight against terrorism.

Such places are often set up because Muslim communities find it exceptionally difficult to establish authorised places of worship in Italy, a country with only four official mosques.

ISLAM

Mosques in Cologne to start broadcasting the call to prayer every Friday

The mayor of Cologne has announced a two-year pilot project that will allow mosques to broadcast the call to prayer on the Muslim day of rest each week.

Mosques in Cologne to start broadcasting the call to prayer every Friday
The DITIP mosque in Cologne. Photo: dpa | Henning Kaiser

Mosques in the city of the banks of the Rhine will be allowed to call worshippers to prayer on Fridays for five minutes between midday and 3pm.

“Many residents of Cologne are Muslims. In my view it is a mark of respect to allow the muezzin’s call,” city mayor Henriette Reker wrote on Twitter.

In Muslim-majority countries, a muezzin calls worshippers to prayer five times a day to remind people that one of the daily prayers is about to take place.

Traditionally the muezzins would call out from the minaret of the mosque but these days the call is generally broadcast over loudspeakers.

Cologne’s pilot project would permit such broadcasts to coincide with the main weekly prayer, which takes place on a Friday afternoon.

Reker pointed out that Christian calls to prayer were already a central feature of a city famous for its medieval cathedral.

“Whoever arrives at Cologne central station is welcomed by the cathedral and the sound of its church bells,” she said.

Reker said that the call of a muezzin filling the skies alongside church bells “shows that diversity is both appreciated and enacted in Cologne”.

Mosques that are interested in taking part will have to conform to guidelines on sound volume that are set depending on where the building is situated. Local residents will also be informed beforehand.

The pilot project has come in for criticism from some quarters.

Bild journalist Daniel Kremer said that several of the mosques in Cologne were financed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “a man who opposes the liberal values of our democracy”, he said.

Kremer added that “it’s wrong to equate church bells with the call to prayer. The bells are a signal without words that also helps tell the time. But the muezzin calls out ‘Allah is great!’ and ‘I testify that there is no God but Allah.’ That is a big difference.”

Cologne is not the first city in North Rhine-Westphalia to allow mosques to broadcast the call to prayer.

In a region with a large Turkish immigrant community, mosques in Gelsenkirchen and Düren have been broadcasting the religious call since as long ago as the 1990s.

SEE ALSO: Imams ‘made in Germany’: country’s first Islamic training college opens its doors

SHOW COMMENTS