Flow of Muslim Immigrants Strains the Reputation for Tolerance of a Small Italian Town
- From: ano457@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: 27 Aug 2005 09:16:59 -0700
Flow of Muslim Immigrants Strains the Reputation for Tolerance of a
Small Italian Town
By IAN FISHER
Published: August 27, 2005
CREMONA, Italy - After the bombs in London in July, the first offer
from the new Muslim leadership here was to form posses to keep an eye
on possible militants. This city, gentle and refined, the home of
Stradivarius, declined.
Dino Fracchia for The New York Times
Sadiq el-Hassan, vice president of the mosque in Cremona, says moderate
Muslims must promote understanding more aggressively.
Another idea that did not work was a possible service by both Muslims
and Christians in the treasure of a cathedral here - which, prosecutors
say, Muslim militants considered blowing up three years ago.
But Sadiq el-Hassan, a leader at Cremona's mosque, insisted that
because the London bombings made future attacks in Europe a near
certainty, something long overdue had to happen: Muslims, finally,
needed to take a stand.
"Our mistake is that we were quiet," said Mr. Hassan, 40, a Tunisian
who in dress and speech seems nearly Italian. "After all that happened
after Sept. 11, we never came out and said, 'These things are bad.' But
it's not too late."
It may not be too late, but Muslim leaders here worry that time is
nonetheless running out on Italy's patience with them - and that worry
has set off an unusual degree of self-criticism.
It has not happened much in Europe, but Mr. Hassan is now planning for
the Muslims of Cremona to show publicly that they are as much against
terrorism and violence as Italians are. In coming weeks, Muslims will
march - in numbers, Mr. Hassan hopes - against extremism carried out in
the name of Islam.
"If the million Muslims who live in Italy don't say anything, it means
we are giving a green light to the terrorists," he said.
To optimists like Mayor Gian Carlo Corada, the march - initiated
entirely by Muslims - could become a model for how the uneasy
relationship between Muslim immigrants and Europeans can be redefined.
Muslims, he said, could begin aligning themselves more clearly for
values that are more European; Europeans, in turn, would be more open
to true integration.
Already for more than a decade, Cremona, a quiet city of 70,000 in the
Po Valley, famous still for violin making, has been an unlikely
laboratory in Italy for relations with immigrants, nurturing both amity
and extremism. And that history seems to show both the need for a new
start to relations, and the difficulties of even the best-intentioned
new beginnings.
The area's farms and factories - and the aging population of Italians,
which has created a need for younger workers - have attracted a far
higher percentage of immigrants here than to Italy as a whole.
According to the mayor, about 20 percent of people in this area are
immigrants, many of them Romanians, Albanians and Sikhs, compared with
less than 5 percent for the whole of Italy. North Africans, mostly
Muslim, began coming in the 1980's, and there are now some 10,000
around Cremona, Mr. Hassan said.
The city's political and religious authorities have largely been
supportive of immigrants, and many immigrants have worked to integrate
themselves. City leaders praise an open dialogue with Muslims
particularly. But given the rapidity of the change, it has been
unsurprisingly imperfect on both sides, as a few recent hours of chat
uncovered.
"Cremona is a racist city," said Tamsir Ousmane, 44, from Senegal,
whose languages include Italian, French, Russian and English, and who
runs a call center downtown. "If I want to rent a house, I can't. They
won't rent to me. Unfortunately, it is like this. But we are here. We
work here. And we pay taxes."
Maria Anselmi, 64, sitting on a park bench with five other older women,
spoke of her fear of a terrorist attack, more acute after the bombings
in London, and about her anxieties about immigrants in general. "In a
while there will be more of them than of us," she said. "They are going
to squash us."
But relations with Muslims have been especially difficult. Nearly a
dozen members of a former mosque were arrested in recent years, and two
were convicted in July for belonging to an extremist cell plotting to
carry out terror attacks. The plots included blowing up the cathedral
here, which dates from 1107.
"The city found itself at the heart of a series of investigations that
suggested it was a crossroads of international terrorism," said Andrea
Gibelli, a legislator from the Northern League, a conservative party
that has advocated a hard line on immigration. "It was very
uncomfortable."
The League has been instrumental in closing several mosques. While it
has not moved against the new and more moderate mosque here, where Mr.
Hassan is vice president, Mr. Gibelli is skeptical - and not only
because of the specific terrorist threats. Muslims, he said, have been
reluctant to integrate. Mosques, he said, "are not places of prayer -
they are for politics."
"They want to create areas where they can hide behind the protection of
religious freedom, completely detached from the rest of the city," Mr.
Gibelli said.
While the Northern League is on the far right, there seems to be a
broader and growing opinion that Muslims in fact need to do more. One
priest who is highly supportive of the Muslim community here conceded
that in joint prayer groups against violence, perhaps only 10 percent
of participants were Muslim. There has been talk for more than a year
about a Muslim march against violence, but it has not yet happened.
Mr. Hassan concedes the criticism is valid. "Integration is difficult,"
he said, "because when you integrate, that is when you have identity
crises. But we have to try."
And in this corner of Italy, which he says has been good to immigrants
like him, he is hoping that the planned march makes a clear,
page-turning statement to change what it means to be a Muslim in
Europe. At the moment, he said, Italians "don't trust us anymore: they
hear 'Muslim,' and they think 'terrorist.' "
The change, he said, "isn't a job, it's a responsibility, because if we
do something wrong, it's really done, it's finished in Cremona."
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting for this article.
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