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France, Italy React To Anti-Muslim Fervor
PARIS, Oct 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The French and Italian governments say they are reacting to a recent resurgence of anti-Muslim sentiment.
On Sunday, the French government announced that had hastened a major reform of the nation's Islamic institutions, with the aim of setting up a single, democratically elected structure for the nation's five million Muslims.
Consultations launched two years ago between the government and a dozen Islamic organizations were accelerated in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Elections for a new "French Council for the Muslim Religion" may be held within the coming months.
Discussions on possible elections between the Ministry of Interior and the "consultative committee" of leading Muslims are scheduled for Wednesday.
The Islamic council would replicate the bodies that represent the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths in France, and replace the multiplicity of different groups - many of them bound by loyalty and funding to foreign countries - that currently speak for French Muslims.
Meanwhile, the National Republic Movement (MNR) is also asking the French government to expel Muslims from France. Party chief Bruno Megret is a French presidential candidate.
The MNR severely criticized the government for commemorating the death of the 200 Algerians who were massacred in France in 1961, saying that it should instead be honoring the French who died in that war.
The party, whose website has a picture of a crossed out minaret, aims to eliminate any Islamic presence on French soil and wants to reactivate capital punishment in France against terrorists.
MNR wants to stop immigration (Muslim) into France and says that the best way to combat terrorism is to stop the
"Islamization" of France.
In Italy, members of the Northern League Party in Italy demonstrated Friday in front of the Islamic Cultural Institute in Milan, demanding that their government expel Muslims living in Italy.
Last week, a high-ranking member of the Northern League called for Muslims to be barred temporarily from entering the country.
"In view of the fact that we are in a war, if we really have to let someone into the country, let us see to it that he is not Muslim," said Francesco Enrico Speroni, director of the cabinet of Northern League chief, Umberto Bossi.
The Northern League has traditionally opposed Muslim immigration.
Bossi, who is the minister in charge of reform and decentralization, is one of three Northern League ministers in Italian Prime Minister's Silvio Berlusconi's government.
Roberto Calderoni, vice president of the Italian parliament, also reiterated the call, demanding Islamic centers and mosques in all parts of Italy be closed.
This new wave of anti-Islamic fervor caused a reaction among the opposition. Javinio Anjosi, an opposition leader and the head of the Democratic leftist party in the Italian parliament, described anti-Muslim statements as extremely dangerous.
He added that these remarks reveal the anti-Islamic sentiments in Berlusconi's government, adding that they aim to justify the prime minister's theory about western civilization being supreme to the Islamic civilization.
The opposition leader said these statements prove that Berlusconi's remarks last month in Berlin was in fact was not a "slip of the tongue".
Also, in Rome, Italy's top security minister issued a public warning to a young Muslim preacher who told demonstrators that suspected terrorist Osama Bin Laden was "innocent" and did not mastermind the September 11 attacks in the United States, the
Times of India reported.
Civil Service Minister Franco Frattini, who has overall responsibility for the security services, told the
La Stampa newspaper that the statement by Bouriki Bouchta, a Moroccan-born imam or Islamic preacher, was "unacceptable", and could possibly give rise to legal action.
Bouchta, who preaches at a mosque in the Porta Palazzo neighborhood of Turin, told participants at a small demonstration in the city that "Bin Laden is innocent of what happened in the United States."
"Bin Laden is a Muslim, who would not allow himself to kill," he said.
"The United States has not provided any proof, but only suspicions" concerning bin Laden's responsibility for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he said.
Frattini said the Italian government believed that "judges should act to weigh the seriousness of the Turin preacher's statements."
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