Italy's Muslim Immigrants Family Violence

In Italy the number of marriages, especially in church, has reached historic lows, but on the other hand mixed marriages between Italians and immigrants are on the rise and have been for several years.

What's the result? Not always family bliss. As could have been easily predicted, cultural and religious differences are more important than multiculturalism leads people to believe.

And within purely immigrant Muslim families the problems are the same.

From Il Giornale di Vicenza, a local paper in the Venice region:

The wife who kills her husband's mistress because she does not comply with the dictates of the Koran; the husband who kills an acquaintance who offended his wife by calling her a prostitute, again in defiance of Muslim laws. The family dramas triggered by religious causes are unfortunately not uncommon in the Vicenza area.

Then there are the nephew tortured because he doesn't go to the mosque, the wife battered for not wearing the burqa, the little Indian girl beaten up due to her choice of an Italian boyfriend.

If the first hypotheses about the Via Todeschini crime were confirmed, namely a quarrel resulted in tragedy over the differences on the sacrifice of a lamb, the death of the young Yemeni would be part of the long trail of blood shed in the Province of Vicenza for reasons related to beliefs, rituals and conflicts of a religious nature.

If the most recent case is that of a young 14-year-old African from Arzignano, whose uncle cut off his ear lobe as punishment because the boy did not want to regularly frequent the mosque, the most resounding, followed by the whole of Italy, dates back to 4 November 1999.

That evening, in the butcher shop near the Multicenter, in the city, the Moroccan citizen Saida Tawil, 38, killed with 32 stab wounds her compatriot Mina Etamraoui. The victim, who was the lover of her husband, did not want to accept the Koranic law of concubinage. An honour killing paid with "only" 6 years in prison because she was granted, thanks to her lawyers Paolo Mele senior and Caterina Evangelisti, the extenuating circumstance of provocation.

The two women were in love with a man, the murderer's husband, who loved both and could not decide. The victim had converted to Western customs; and although the killer had recognized the concubine, as the Koran rules, she did not accept that she didn't respect the laws of the Koran by wearing Western clothes and drinking beer.

For these religious reasons she murdered her and injured her own husband.

The previous year, in Bassano, another Moroccan killed the man who had dared call his wife a prostitute; in this case as well, the murderer acted for religious motives, because that type of insult is considered very serious by the Koran.

A case that received much coverage is that of an Asian immigrant living in the Chiampo valley, who wanted to prevent his daughter from going out with an Italian boy. For him this was unacceptable, so he locked her in the house and beat her up. Similar is the case of the Arzignano husband who mistreated his wife for not wearing a burqa as his religion dictates, and who was reported and risked being arrested.

Another phenomenon, less serious, is represented by the customs of the Sikh religious community, which is very strong in all Alto Vicentino and normally meets in Castelgomberto. [The problems here are] The turban, which prevents them from wearing helmets when riding a motorbike, and even more the knife they carry around as an object of worship (like the cross for a Christian) and is frequently seized by the police, with criminal charges, as a posssible weapon.

Hat tip to Vale Ramone.