An undercover report featuring an imam who cited the Qur’an as an endorsement for marrying girls at the age of nine has triggered massive backlash in Italy, providing momentum for recent parliamentary legislation targeting Islamic separatism.
With this bill, we want to clearly reaffirm that cultural or religious free zones in conflict with our Constitution cannot exist in Italy.
On January 27, the First Committee of the Chamber of Deputies in Italy’s bicameral parliament began examining Bill AC2562 to combat religious separatism, introduced by Fratelli D’Italia (FD), the party headed by Prime Minister Georgia Meloni.
The bill targets foreign funding for mosques, enforces stricter penalties for forced marriages, bans the full veil in public places, prohibits issuing certificates of virginity (except for health reasons) and seeks the authority to close mosques preaching Islamist supremacy and hatred.
It aims to prevent “the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, which undeniably constitutes the breeding ground for Islamist terrorism” and “particularly the Islamic fundamentalism developed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists, and Wahhabis, who are pursuing a conscious and theoretical political-religious agenda” aimed at “contravening the laws of the Republic.”
“The recent investigation into the network of pro-Palestinian activists who financed Hamas under the guise of charity for Gaza, as well as the proclamations of some fundamentalist imams who legitimize marriages with 9-year-old girls because ‘the Quran permits it,’ demonstrate that Islamic fundamentalism is a real threat to our society,” parliamentarian Sara Kelany, head of FD’s immigration department, announced.
Channel4’s Investigative Report Exposing Child Brides
Two days before the committee began studying the proposed legislation, Channel4 released an investigative report on an imam from Brescia providing Quranic justification for child brides. Brescia, which has the highest concentration of Muslims in the country relative to its total population, has been described as the Islamic “capital” of Italy.
Accompanied by an Arabic interpreter, Francesco Leone, the reporter for the TV program Fuori dal Coro, pretended to be an Italian who wants to convert to Islam and wants to know more about child brides. “We made a shocking discovery. Even the Muslims living in Italy consider these marriages as proper,” the reporter noted.
An imam in the Bangladeshi Islamic Community Center (Centro Culturale del Bangladesh) is caught on camera telling the reporter, “On the first (menstrual) cycle of life, (a woman) is an adult. After nine years, after 10 years, after 13 years, she is an adult. You can marry her. It is a tradition.”
Leone then goes to the mosque and talks to a Muslim claiming to be the imam. The imam does not speak Italian but conveys his message through an interpreter. “Even science tells us that a nine-year-old girl can get married. In Islam, a girl becomes an adult at age nine. The Qur’an says that it [the marriage] can be done,” he says. When asked if the child bride can marry a man who is 30 to 40 years old, the imam responds: “Yes, 30 to 40 years old.”
The imam, speaking in Urdu, insists that the girl must have begun her period. “The religion of Islam says if the parents are happy, the father and mother are happy and agree, then the marriage can take place.” When the interpreter says he has married a 13-year-old, a Muslim in the mosque commends him for it. “God doesn’t tell you you cannot marry them. You can marry them. Here, the state prevents you,” he adds.
When Leone conducted a second interview after identifying himself, the imam denied any knowledge of the Islamic law on marriage. A Muslim defending the imam responded: “Every country has its own laws.” When asked if the Qur’an permitted such marriages, the Muslim said, “If our prophet married a 12-year-old girl, why can’t others do it?”
Italian Islamic Scholar Warns of Islamist Infiltration
Speaking to Focus on Western Islamism (FWI), Francesco Maggio, an Italian Islamic scholar, expressed his concern over the phenomenon of child brides—a practice in the Islamic world—entering Italy. “In Gaza, there are men between the ages of 16 and 36 who marry girls between the ages of six and ten. They tell us they’re imitating their prophet Muhammad,” he said.
“The practice is not yet widespread in Italy,” Maggio observed. “But recent statements by some imams have made even bald men’s hair stand on end. And a section of the Italian judiciary is not dealing firmly with such offenders. We are allowing ourselves to be infiltrated by Islamist pedophiles.”
“It is not so much Islam that is invading Europe, but postmodernism that is causing Europe to surrender to Islam. Europe and Italy must defend their cultural and religious identity and not allow the formation of parallel cultures that see Western values as enemies,” he emphasized.
Commentators have also highlighted the case of a 12-year-old Italian girl from Lecce who was forced by her mother to marry the younger brother of her new partner: a Pakistani man whom her mother, after converting to Islam, had married in Pakistan. The girl’s father blocked the forced marriage by appealing to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Juvenile Court.
“With this bill, we want to clearly reaffirm that cultural or religious free zones in conflict with our Constitution cannot exist in Italy,” stressed Elisabetta Gardini, Fratelli D’Italia’s deputy leader in the Chamber of Deputies. “Defending integration also means having the courage to say no to practices and excesses that deny fundamental rights, starting with those of women and children.”
Meanwhile, the Islamic Cultural Center of Brescia has distanced itself from the TV report, stating that the comments on child brides were uttered “by isolated individuals who in no way represent the thinking and/or organization of the Islamic community.”
