London, Berlin, Cologne, and then Bologna and Genoa. All over Europe there are uprisings, and people are even coming down to public squares, every time there is talk of building a Mosque. How can you explain these protests?

We are facing an enormous movement of people within societies, which until very recently, were mono-cultural, mono-ethnic and mono-religious. These migrations, these mutations, are provoking quite understandable worries and resistance, because no country sees enormous migrations carries out by people who are generally poor and who have a different culture to our own as favourable. The migrations, inevitably, alter a pre-constituted equilibrium and pose new problems. These are legitimate fears, if we think that man is born and grows up with the fear of the unknown. Our pre-historical ancestors defended themselves with stones at the entrance of their caves, then there was the arrival of fortifications, city walls and finally borders. With migrations, we need only to learn to recognize ‘the other’ and not be scared of it. There will be psychological mutations and social behaviour which will take a lot of time, the resistance of the people is unfortunately completely natural.

Let us look at the cases of Bologna and Genoa. How do you judge the behaviour of the two mayors, who are, by the way, both left-wing? In front of the proposal of building the Mosque, Sergio Cofferati will appeal to a local referendum, while Marta Vincenzi, in Genoa, turned to the Interior Minister Giuliano Amato in the search of “clarifications”.

I am under the impression that the behaviour of the two mayors corresponds to a healthy prudence and graduality. But then, I am always in favour of consulting the citizens on more important themes, in this I have a slightly Swiss spirit. It does not take much to open a small hall for neighbourhood prayer. They have always been built and will always be built, providing that we are talking of halls equipped for receiving the public, with emergency exits and respecting security norms. But when it deals with building a large complex, which can change the urban atmosphere it emerges from (and this is the case of the mega-Mosque of Bologna, which would have taken up 52,000 square metres of land), it seems legitimate to me to ask the consent of the citizens who live in that area, through a referendum or at least a detailed poll. Take the example of the Grand Mosque of Rome, where our Islamic cultural centre has offices and which is in an area which is practically uninhabited. When building began, the inhabitants of the surrounding areas understandably started to worry, because they were afraid that a shantytown of immigrants would emerge in that place, or because more simply, they believed that there would have been disturbances five times a day at the call to prayer from the top of the minaret (the first call, I recall, is before dawn, in the middle of the night). These worries were then overcome, and the Tar gave the all clear to construction without any problems. In the cases of Genoa and Bologna, where construction is scheduled in inhabited areas, it makes even more sense to take into account the worries of the citizens, and it is right that Cofferati consults the population of the neighbourhood.

In Corriere della Sera Magdi Allam, who is against the project of the Bolognese mosque, has written that in Italy there are already too many mosques.

First of all, there is only one mosque, the one in Rome. The others are places or prayer halls. The total number would today amount to 735. It may seem to be a very high number, but we have to take into consideration that the average capacity of these halls, according to my calculations, is around 70-80 people, compared to the 4,000 of the mosque in Rome. And 735 by 80 makes 58,000.

Less than the Olympic stadium.

Exactly. Which means that all of the mosques present today in Italy can only host 7%, more or less, of the Muslim community residing in Italy. Magdi Allam is right when he points out that it is not known who these halls are run by or who the guides of the Friday prayer are. Mainly, they are unqualified imam, who preach in make-shift places. And it is all too clear what kind of preaching they do. There are some things we should be worried about, because it is a phenomenon which is developing in quite a tumultuous way in a very delicate international situation where Islamic countries are victims, or active parties, in bloody conflicts which feed fundamentalist movements which are also transnational, or all kinds of terrorist groups which have nothing to do with the authentic message of Islam and which should be prevented from infiltrating western Islamic communities. There are not many mosques in Italy; there are not even enough to assure a service of religious assistance of the Italian Muslim population.

How transparent are our mosques? And are they financed by money from foreign countries, with everything that this can mean in terms of ideological and political dependence?

Foreign money could get to some big centres of some particular mosques, but the majority of these small prayer halls (which I have visited at length between 1997 and 1999) are set up in makeshift places, and support themselves with the money collections on Fridays or with various businesses, the so-called “Islam business”. To look at a specific case, Bouiriqi Bouchta, the Moroccan imam expulsed two years ago, had three Islamic butchers in Turin and imported and sold food goods of Egyptian, Moroccan and Tunisian production. The Islamic centre in Rome is financed from abroad, but the Interior Minister is fully aware. Saudi Arabia invests in Italy, but relatively, because its objective is to invest in central Asian republics to fight against Iranian competition. My fear is something else. Not that foreign money of dubious origin gets to Italian mosques, but that the Italian Islamic centres collect money to finance activities abroad, for example to finance internal opposition to governments of countries of emigration which are allies with the west, in the hope of overturning the constituted order.

One of the arguments against the construction of the mosque in Bologna is that there is the fear that it be monopolized by the Islamic movement of the Ucoii, accused by many of having very radical standings. Is this a problem for you? And how can we get out of this situation?

It is very likely that the Ucoii is behind the construction of the mosque in Bologna. The only solution is the impose they respect certain rules: the absolute transparency on the sources which are used to build places of cult and the absolute transparency of its management. A difficult and delicate job, but which must be done. Islam per se is not a threat, but politicized and fundamentalist Islam is, which is a consequence of an international panorama pervaded by many conflicts, which in reality, to reiterate, would not have had anything to do with the great religion and the great culture that Islam is.

Therefore today this transparency in Italian mosques would not exist?

From what I can gather, and also speaking with the Institutions, unfortunately in the majority of the cases, no. With regards this issue, Magdi Allam is completely right.

Do you any criticisms towards the Italian left, in this debate?

I see that the so-called radical left, unfortunately, is suffering from being at the wrong end of the stick. It sees certain Islamic movements as representative as the real base, of the real proletariat. It has a certain affinity with them because it interprets them as anti-imperialist and anti-American movements, but it has the wrong end of the stick.

According to the Economist, it is much easier to build a mosque in America than in Europe. Does this surprise you?

No, not at all. America, as we all know, is a country where there is more freedom initiative compared to European countries, where the State has more control on society.

Translation by Sonia Ter Hovanessian