Religious Diversity and Multiculturalism in Southern Europe: The Italian Mosque Debate

In southern European countries, where immigration is a recent phenomenon, cultural and religious diversity brought into the host societies by non-EU immigrants has become an important public issue. The controversy over the construction of two new mosques in and around Milan, in October 2000, offers a suitable example for the study of attitudes and views on religious diversity in Italy, its recognition, acceptance or rejection. In the first part of the paper, I shall discuss briefly the size and composition of the immigrant community, the socio-economic position of immigrants in the host society and the legal provisions for naturalisation. In the second part of the paper, I shall concentrate on the ‘mosque issue’ and the dubious emergence of views and practices favouring a multicultural society and citizenship. The analysis is based on material collected from four major newspapers with both a regional and national circulation. The material will be analysed quantitatively with a view of identifying the main ‘voices’ involved in the debate and the thematic dimensions that organise it. A qualitative methodology of discourse analysis will be used to identify the prevailing discourse(s) and also how the different positions put forward by the dominant social and political actors are linked with specific features of the Italian political and party system. In the concluding section, I will discuss critically the Italian version of multiculturalism emerging in the mosque debate.