Increase training opportunities for imams in Italy and Europe to enable them to act as ‘bridges’ between mosques and communities is the recommendation from the international conference ‘Imams in Western Europe’ held on Thursday in Rome.
The conference, organized by the LUISS Guido Carli University and John Cabot University, will end on Friday. Many researchers are taking part to discuss the issue of social, cultural and political integration of Islam in European society, including Paolo Branca, Arabic language instructor at Milan’s Universita’ Cattolica. Illustrating his idea by comparing it to the day’s bad weather conditions, Branca said that “Italy is experiencing the spread of Islam as if it were an atmospheric phenomenon, without planning any mid-term intervention to improve coexistence.” “When the rain end we’ll discover the damage,” he added, underscoring that “the situation in mosques is very chaotic.
Islam is a religion without a structured hierarchy, and it is thus difficult to understand how to do manage without religious leaders. This is why there is ever more a need to train imams with a scientific, critical methodology who often, in the Western context, pretend to be such out of necessity. We don’t need catechists and preachers. We need people able to engage in dialogue with the institutions.” “The first thing to clarify is that imams are not priests,” said Stefano Allievi, an expert on Islam and sociology instructor at the University of Padova, warning against the ‘church-ization’ of Islam in Europe. “In their countries of origin, imams lead prayers, while in the West they are called on to deal with the practical problems of communities without having the skills to do so. We often speak about ‘imported imams’ who are paid very little, are uneducated and are not integrated, in part due to a lack of knowledge of the host country.” “In general,” added Allievi, “Italy has not yet understood that it is pluralistic country from the point of view of religion, as evinced from public and institutional policy as well as in legislation. Since 2007 there has been no more talk of agreements (that the Italian state stipulates with non-Catholic religious communities, Ed.). An initial, necessary step would be to structure the training of imams, which so far has been too episodic or entrusted to a certain university, unlike other European nations more attentive to the issue.”