On June 10, 2018, Matteo Salvini, newly appointed Italian interior minister, captured international news headlines when he banned a rescue boat from reaching its destination on Italian soil. The Aquarius, run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and SOS Mediterranee, carried over 600 migrants and refugees from the African continent and was the first of a series of boats prevented from docking at Italian ports this past summer. In fact, this incident was one of many to underscore the current and ever-growing animosity towards immigrants in Europe. Accompanying the anti-immigration stance that is spreading throughout the continent is an underlying and thinly veiled anti-Islamic sentiment, creating a hostility that is further legitimized by some country leaders and politicians. European Muslims and Muslims in Europe are now forced to face and navigate an environment in which negative stereotypes on Islam and its presence in Europe abound.
To combat this rising Islamophobia, a number of European Muslim and non-Muslim organizations are establishing projects and campaigns in order to educate European citizens on Islam. A precursor in this field is the COREIS Italiana (Italian Islamic Religious Community), an Italian organization composed of autochthonous Italian Muslims whose central priority is to “bear witness to and safeguard the heritage of the Islamic religion in the West.” They do so by working as religious and cultural mediators in order to respond to the educational and religious needs of the Italian Islamic community but also to represent the religion at both a national and international level.
Established in 1993 by Shaykh Abd al Wahid Pallavicini (1926-2017) and now led by his son, Imam Yahya Pallavicini, the organization has regularly participated in public debates on Islam and its place in Europe. At the forefront in interreligious dialogue, collaborating with other Muslim organizations in Italy and beyond, and serving as a prime interlocutor for Islam with the Italian government, the COREIS has raised awareness on issues of social justice and integration faced by the Muslim community.
Most recently, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and in concomitance with Christian Lent, the COREIS organised 114 Pizza & Dolci (Desserts): Lent 2018 and Ramadan 1439. This year saw the second iteration of the project named after a combination of the 114 surahs (chapters) of the Qur'an and Italy’s emblematic food, a symbolic way of showing that Islam is not antithetical to European culture. Along with a wide range of Muslim, Christian, and secular partners and organizations, the COREIS coordinated 40 dinners that fed over 3,000 Muslim and Christian immigrants in 15 cities across the entire Italian peninsula. Beyond offering food to those in need, the project seeks to take concrete action by uniting “hospitality and citizenship, dialogue and cooperation, development and trust, conscience and consciousness” in order to produce a moment of interreligious and intercultural dialogue and integration that can be permanently sustained. Inspired by and responding to Pope Francis’ homily for the 2018 World Day of Migrants and Refugees, in which the leader of the Catholic church called believers to “welcome, protect, promote, and integrate,” the COREIS found ways to welcome those arriving in Italy seeking economic and political stability but also spiritual, familial, cultural, and social comfort.
Through its work and the mere existence of its members, of which the majority are Italian-born converts to Islam, the Italian COREIS demonstrates how Islam is not fundamentally incompatible with Italian/European culture. In a time when hate crimes by and against Muslim immigrants foment intolerance on both sides, organizations like the COREIS set an example that, if followed by others, could serve to attenuate a political and social climate that risks further dividing Europe.
