Ambassador between Two Worlds

The similarities are striking. It is March and a right-wing government is seeking endorsement from the voters in the upcoming parliamentary elections. The government's prominent foreign policy support of the USA in Iraq has brought the hatred of Islamic fundamentalists down upon its head. Threats are appearing on the Internet. This is where, so far at least, the parallels end.

Two years ago in Spain, fundamentalists murdered almost 200 people. In Italy, shortly before the polling starts on April 9th, all is calm. The intelligence services are alert however; for them, the weeks leading up to the election are a time of increased danger.

There is no shortage of people ready and willing to fan the flames in such a situation. Reform minister Roberto Calderoli of the Northern League party was forced to resign in February after donning a T-shirt emblazoned with a cartoon satirising Islam.

The Islamic Council is "a monster", says Minister

Party colleague and Justice Minister, Roberto Castelli, not to be left behind, declared: "I do not believe in a moderate Islam", before going on to demonstrate his consistency by referring to the Islamic Council, recently set up by the Italian Ministry of the Interior, as "a monster".

There are some Italians, however, who are prepared to stand up against this crude confrontationalism. One of these is a man who though he has his feet planted firmly on the ground, they are on two sides of the fence. Mario Scialoja, once a top diplomat in devoutly Catholic Italy, is now a Muslim and president of the Italian section of the World Muslim League, a large, Saudi Arabian-influenced organisation.

It is this straddling of two worlds that allows him to build bridges. From his office in Rome's "Great Mosque" he has built up contacts throughout the world, he says, with friends in the government, the Vatican, in Jewish organisations and in Washington.

A visit from Rome's chief rabbi

As though to prove the point, who should come calling an hour later but Rome's chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, making his first historic visit to the mosque. Di Segni and his friend Scialoja stand devout in their stocking feet before the mihrab, the prayer niche which faces toward Mecca in this largest of all European mosques. Standing there, with their full grey beards, beneath the immense dome they look like Old Testament prophets.

Their message is one of inter-religious peace and tolerance. "The struggles against Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are parallel struggles", says the rabbi. And for him it is only right and proper to protest against cartoons that insult Islam.

A Jew defending Muslims – for Scialoja no surprise. He is used, after all, to looking beyond the limits of the individual religions. In 1988, having just taken up his post as United Nations ambassador in New York, he decided to convert to Islam.

"The decision was entirely my own", he says, sitting in thick black coat in his office next to the mosque, its floor bedecked with oriental carpets. "I have read a great deal and studied the Koran. The direct contact between the believer and God is what I like about Islam – without all the mediators, the priests and saints of Catholicism, for example."

Conversion brought no complications

Friends and family have accepted what he has done, says the retired diplomat. True, his Catholic wife's initial reaction was to greatly increase the frequency of her churchgoing, but "that sorted itself out, eventually." On the professional front too, the decision brought no complications.

"The foreign ministry did not react at all, something that surprised even me." Behind his back though, some of his colleagues must have looked on askance, maybe whispering about Scialoja having lost his marbles.

Now, however, it is as Muslim that the former ambassador has become valuable to Italy. He has a valuable role to play as intermediary at a time when both the number of Muslims and the threat from fundamentalists is growing in the country. Scialoja warns of the dangers of a blindly irrational reaction to these developments.

Most of the Muslim immigrants are refugees from poverty or persecution, he says. They have come to Italy to look for work and the prospect of a better life for themselves and their children. Only about six percent of the country's Muslims go to mosques regularly and for the great majority of these the visit is for the purpose of praying, not politics.

Successful Jordanians

In Scialoja's opinion, religious belief is not the main hindrance to integration for Italy's 1.2 million Muslims. "I know many Jordanians and Syrians whose skin colour is similar to ours, who have found good jobs here, and who have not had any trouble finding Italian friends", he says.

He adds some further reflections that he admits are "not politically correct". The integration problems are racial, not religious, he believes, citing the position of many blacks in USA as an example, and, of course, one shouldn't forget the frequent problems encountered by Africans in Italy.

Avoiding the formation of ghettos as has happened in France is something he sees as very important. Only when immigrants and natives live in the same areas and their children and attend the same schools can integration be truly successful. And this for Scialoja is a must. "Nobody can say to what extent the number of Muslims in Italy will increase in the next fifty years, but one thing is certain: it will rise dramatically."

Questioned about the number of Islamic fundamentalists in the country Scialoja becomes facetiously evasive. "Do you want to know the truth? I'm not going to tell you."

On one point though, he is very open: dialogue with extremists, whether in Iraq or in Italy, is a waste of time. Integration would be a far more effective way for the West to pull the rug out from under the feet of the fundamentalists. In Italy with its low birth rate and high immigration there is no alternative. "We either choose to live together or we invite disaster."

Stefan Ulrich

© Süddeutsche Zeitung/Qantara.de 2006

Translated from the German by Ron Walker

Qantara.de

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