The Annual Muslim Debate in Italy

Questionable diplomatic behavior on the part of the Italian premier meanwhile includes repeated references to US President Barack Obama as suntanned.

(ROME) - I cannot recall a visit to my friend’s home in Puglia, southern Italy, in which the Muslim invasion of Europe has not surfaced as a discussion topic. It often initiates when one or more of my friend’s relatives discovers that I have just been to Turkey or Lebanon, for example, and remarks on my good fortune as a female to have avoided being stoned to death.

This year’s discussion started out as an innocent rant by my friend’s cousin against the concomitant invasion of Italy by Romanian criminals, who were said to make Albanian immigrants look well-behaved and who along with the euro constituted proof of the heinous nature of the European Union. A comment on the need to backtrack on a Europe without borders then led to the cousin’s observation that fortified Italian frontiers would additionally prevent Muslims from faking qualifications for asylum in order to continue the quest to absorb Italy into an Islamic caliphate. As for faked qualifications, it was now decided that stoning was not overly oppressive.

Following the Italian escort back to Libya last year of a boat containing some 227 potential asylum seekers, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had confirmed that a multiethnic society was not the overarching objective of his government—something he additionally implied earlier this year via his comment that it was getting harder to distinguish certain parts of Milan from Africa. Neither event prevented him from kissing Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s hand during an official visit this past March, however; other questionable diplomatic behavior on the part of the Italian premier meanwhile includes repeated references to US President Barack Obama as suntanned—which may or may not have influenced Italian opposition politician Antonio di Pietro’s suggestion following the maritime escort to Libya last year that Obama himself might one day experience difficulties entering Italian territory.

Late Italian journalist and writer Oriana Fallaci—source of such ideas as that there are so few Muslims who appreciate liberty, democracy and secularism that they require bodyguards and that the Qur’an is the new Mein Kampf—had blamed the permeability of Italian borders on the Italian left, and warned that permitting Muslims in Italy to wear chadors and burqas with blatant disregard for Italian culture was equivalent to the Munich Pact of 1938. Indignant that Muslims were not content with having schools and hospitals on Italian land and instead had to construct mosques as well, Fallaci perished in 2006 prior to fulfilling her promise to explode a mosque planned for construction in Tuscany.

My friend’s cousin in Puglia has meanwhile advocated a larger explosion in order to eliminate Iran from the world map and thus put an end to undemocratic killings there. He has nonetheless acknowledged that political arrangements in which the national prime minister is the owner of primary national media outlets might not be entirely democratic, either.

Belén is a feature writer at Pulse Media. Her articles also have appeared in CounterPunch, Narco News, Palestine Chronicle, Palestine Think Tank, Rebelión, Tlaxcala, The Electronic Intifada, Upside Down World, and Venezuelanalysis.com. Her book “Coffee with Hezbollah,” a humorous political travelogue chronicling her hitchhiking trip through Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 Israeli assault, is available at Amazon, Amazon UK, and Barnes and Noble.

Born in Washington, DC, in 1982, Belén earned her bachelor's degree with a concentration in political science from Columbia University in New York City. Her diverse background of worldwide experiences, created a fantastic writer; one whose work we are extremely happy to share with Salem-News.com viewers. You can contact Belén at: belengarciabernal@gmail.com