Islam, Imam Pallavicini: “Justifying the burqa is an alibi for violence”

“If the interpretation of a culture leads to ghettoization and violence, then it is a question of a bad cultural interpretation and an abuse of culture for purposes that have nothing cultural at all”. This was stated by Yahya Pallavicini, president of Coreis, the Italian Islamic religious community, and imam preacher at the al-Wahid mosque in Milan, after the prosecutor of Perugia Franco Bettini withdrew the request for dismissal for a case of mistreatment and imposition of the veil integral by a North African man towards his wife, a request which stated, among other things, that the conduct of imposing the veil ‘falls within the cultural framework, albeit not acceptable from a Western point of view, of the subjects concerned’. “The interpretation of a culture must not be the excuse for an abuse of force or of relationships that are not the respect between men and women and the integration, citizenship and development of the person in the Italian context”, he explains. “The full veil is not something that has to do with the religious identity of the Muslim or any other denomination or religious identity. In wanting to impose it on a woman, two mistakes are made: the first is a cultural artifice and the second is a violence. religious and civil “, explains Pallavicini. “If I have to protect religious pluralism and an interpretation of inclusive citizenship – concludes the president of Coreis – I cannot include a cultural interpretation that is harmful to the dignity of women and artificial in the context of any culture and religion”.