Mosque plans bring controversy to Tuscan town

[Ciro]

I would like to know what you guys think about this.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12927212/

[Aggrad02]

Ciro,

It is really interesting that you posted this article. Two weeks ago I picked up the book Force of Reason (La Forza della Ragione) by Oriana Fallaci. I'm not sure if you know much about her, I had never heard of her but, the title of her book was very interesting. After having passed the book three or four times in the store I decided that I had to get it so I did. I read the book in about a day in a half and found it quite interesting. I am currently rereading it and taking notes so that I can write a review of it in the book section. She is an atheist but is strongly against the Muslim invasion (via immigration and fertility) of Italy, for the simple fact that they do not integrate and have no intention to do so. That they take over small communities within a city and then using mafia type strength control the area and apply Muslim Law. She sees it as a quite invasion not integration. In the book she mentions this situation (the book was published in Italian in 2004, just recently in English).

P.115-118 "For almost a half a century, a feud of the Communist and consequently a stronghold of the sons of Allah. I mean, the case of Colle Val dÉlsa: the medevil town that Dante Alighieri mentions in the thirteenth Canto of Purgatory and which, blessed by one of the finest Chianti landscapes, lies ten miles from Siena. Because on the top of its hill, a hillthat seems to have been painted by Duccio Boninsegna or Simone Martini or Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the Center Left Council wants to erect a mosque comparable to the grand mosque of Rome. That's right. A grand, a grandiose mosque with dome and courtyard and palms, completed by an eighty-feet-high minaret and embellished by the buildings of the new Islamic Center that the local Muslims demand. Listen to me, listen....

It all began a month after September 11, when the rubbles of the Twin Towers were still smoking but a press-agency communique informed the world that the leftist mayor of Colle Val dÉsla had allocated a billion and a half liras (around a million dollars) to expand on public land the Islamic Center and transfer it to an area capable of accomodating the mosque. A mosque enriched by the over-mentioned minaret of which the Muslim Community of Siena and Province was in the most pressing needs. With the mosque, three hundred and fifty residence units that the community needed as much. With the resident units, an Islamic cemetery in perpetual property. All things of which the twenty thousand citzens of Colle Val dÉsla knew absolutely nothing and had not consequently expressed any opinion, given no approval.

Well, the hell broke loose. Blasphemous yellings. Slanging machetes. Appeals to the Court of Justice. As well as furious debates and petitions to halt the triple project. The mayor had no right to give away public land and spend public money on enterprises which favored foreigners and damaged citzens, people said. Besides, how did the mayor dare to build a mosque enriched by a minaret in an environment that with mosques and minarets had nothing to do?!? There were only three hundred Muslims at Colle Val dÉsla, and one thousand in the province of Siena: so where was the "pressing needs"? As for the cemeterey, the municiple one was open to the deceased to any creed. Why did the Muslims had to have their own personal one, their own special one? Why should their tombs be in perpetuity while the Christians and the Jews and the Buddhist and the atheist were kept in their graves for no longer than a few decades? A Defence Committe was also formed. "Stop the mosque, stop the cemetery! Hands off our land". A committee composed of labor-workers, farmers, pensioners, housewives. Usually, the people who had voted for the Left. But it achieved nothing. And soon the mosque with the minaret will disfigure the landscape of Duccio Boninsegna and Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. A mosque witha minaret so high as ninety feet. And, as if it were not enough, another one will raise in Florence where the jealous and leftist administration has decided to rival Colle Val d'Esla inside the historical center of the city. Meaning into the homeland of Dante Alighieri, of Patrarca, Boccaccio, Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Lorenzo il Magnificio. And so on and so on... In fact now I ask myself through what negligence or stupidity or destiny people like me failed to realize in time that we were coming to this. "

This is interesting to add to immigration debate. Can you still be for unlimited immigration when a group of poeple (who are fundamentally different than you) do not want to integrate but to invade your country by immigration and fertility and then proceed to use your own democracy to impliment their beliefs and unfree way of life.

As to the action by the Mayor of Colle Val d'Esla, giving away land for religous purposes (or any other purpose)is clearly wrong. If the muslims of that region want a mosque why don't they do it the way that all other groups do and raise money, buy private land and build what they please.

Here is the Wikipedia article on Oriana Fallaci:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriana_Fallaci

Some interesting things from that article:

"In 2002 in Switzerland the Islamic Center and the Somal Association of Geneva, SOS Racisme of Lausanne and a private citizen sued her for the supposedly racist content of The Rage and The Pride. In November 2002 a Swiss judge issued an arrest warrant for violations of article 261 and 261 bis of the Swiss criminal code and requested the Italian government to either try or extradite her. Roberto Castelli, Italian minister of Justice mentioned this fact in an interview broadcasted by Radio Padania affirming that the Italian Constitution protects the Freedom of Speech and thus the extradition request had to be rejected, the episode is mentioned in her book The Force of Reason"

"In May, 2005, Adel Smith, president of the Union of Italian Muslims, launched a lawsuit against Fallaci charging that "some of the things she said in her book The Force of Reason are offensive to Islam." Smith's attorney, Matteo Nicoli, cited a phrase from the book that refers to Islam as "a pool that never purifies." Consequently an Italian judge ordered her to stand trial set for June 2006 in Bergamo on charges of "defaming Islam." A previous prosecutor had sought dismissal of the charges"

If you can believe this she has an arrest warrant in Switzerland and a upcoming trial in Italy for what she WROTE about Islam.

Another interesting thing from the article that I didnot know until just now:

"A journalist from Florence, Tiziano Terzani, expressed disagreements with her approach in an open letter to her in Corriere della Sera while David Holcberg at the Ayn Rand Institute supported her cause with a letter to the Washington Times"

Dustan