Islam in Italy

The Norman conquest of Sicily led to a gradual decline of Islam, due to the conversions and emigration of Muslims toward Northern Africa.

[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] In more recent years, there has been migration from Pakistan, the Balkans (mainly Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina), Bangladesh, India, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia.

Other religions, including Judaism and smaller groups, such as the Assemblies of God, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Seventh-day Adventists, already enjoy the official recognition in the form of signed agreements with the Italian government.

In late 2004, Italian minister, Giuseppe Pisanu set out in an attempt to create a unified leadership among the Muslim community.

According to some sources, the conquest was spurred by Euphemius, a Byzantine commander who feared punishment by Emperor Michael II for a sexual indiscretion.

After a short-lived conquest of Syracuse, he was proclaimed emperor but was compelled by loyal forces to flee to the court of Ziyadat Allah in Ifriqiya.

To end the constant mutinies of his army, the Aghlabid magistrate of Ifriqiya sent Arabian, Berber, and Andalusian rebels to conquer Sicily in 827, 830 and 875, led by, among others, Asad ibn al-Furat.

The local population conquered by the Muslims were Romanized Catholic Sicilians in Western Sicily and partially Greek speaking Christians, mainly in the eastern half of the island, but there were also a significant number of Jews.

However, even after 100 years of Islamic rule, numerous Greek-speaking Christian communities prospered, especially in north-eastern Sicily, as dhimmis.

[20] In 882 the Muslims had founded at the mouth of Garigliano between Naples and Rome a new base further in the north, which was in league with Gaeta, and had attacked Campania as well as Sabinia in Lazio.

In 915, Pope John X organised a vast alliance of southern powers, including Gaeta and Naples, the Lombard princes and the Byzantines.

The subsequent Battle of the Garigliano was successful, and all Saracens were captured and executed, ending any presence of Arabs in Lazio or Campania permanently.

[21] A hundred years later, the Byzantines called the Sicilian Muslims to ask for support against a campaign of German emperor Otto II.

They beat Otto at the battle of Stilo in 982 and for the next 40 years largely succeeded in preventing his successors from entering southern Italy.

After the Aghlabids were defeated in Ifriqiya as well, Sicily fell in the 10th century to their Fatimid successors, but claimed independence after fights between Sunni and Shia Muslims under the Kalbids.

The cultural and economical bloom in Sicily that had started under the Kalbids was interrupted by internecine fights, followed by invasions by the Tunisian Zirids (1027), Pisa (1030–1035), and the Romans (1027 onwards).

Messina fell to the Normans in 1061; an invasion by the Algerian Hammadids to preserve Islamic rule was thwarted in 1063 by the fleets of Genoa and Pisa.

[citation needed] The first Sicilian Normans did not take part in the Crusades, but they undertook a number of invasions and raids in Ifriqiya, before they were defeated thereafter 1157 by the Almohads.

Their medical knowledge was preserved in the Schola Medica Salernitana; an Arabian-Roman-Norman synthesis in art and architecture survived as Sicilian Romanesque.

The remaining Muslims fled, for example to Caltagirone on Sicily, or hid out in the mountains and continued to resist against the Hohenstaufen dynasty, who ruled the island from 1194 on.

To end this upheaval, emperor Frederick II, himself a Crusader, instigated a policy to rid Sicily of the few remaining Muslims.

In 1224–1239 he deported every single Muslim from Sicily to an autonomous colony under strict military control (so that they could not infiltrate non-Muslim areas) in Lucera in Apulia.

In any case, the Ottoman sultans had not given up their ambition to take over the Italian Peninsula and to finally install Islamic sovereignty after the conquest of Constantinople.

Next to Spain, the biggest contribution to the victory of the Christian "Holy League" in the battle of Lepanto in 1571 was made by the Republic of Venice, which between 1423 and 1718 fought eight costly wars against the Ottoman Empire.

Police forces have not had great success in intercepting many of the thousands of clandestini who land on Italian beaches, mainly because of a political unwillingness, partly fostered by the EU, to address the issue.

[41] In November 2016, Minister of the Interior Angelino Alfano reported that Italy had deported nine imams for inciting racial violence.

[49] Official state recognition would guarantee and protect places of worship, recognize religious holidays and allow access to public funding.

[57] In July 2016, the Moroccan imam at the Asonna center in Noventa Vicentina was deported for reportedly expressing extremist views and for posing a security threat.

[58] In March 2018, police carried out an anti-terrorist operation in Foggia against the Al Dawa unauthorized prayer hall located near the railway station.

[62] In recent years there have been some acts of violence against Islamic places of worship in Italy: A minority of Italian Muslims belong to religious associations, the best known of which are: