‘Islamic bomb’ in Milan, Italian father knifes his daughter, and Mara Carfagna escort-cum-minister against niqab and burqa

At Osimo, in the Marche region, an Italian father tried to kill his own daughter with a knife because she had an Albanian boyfriend.

The crime is described in a very reasonable fashion in the media: a man who went out of his mind because he didn’t like his daughter’s new fiance. There were no reporters with hidden mikes going into Catholic churches to dig up "preachers of hatred", nor did the cameras focus on the copies of Oriana Fallaci’s books on sale at the local bookshops. ^[1]

Another news item.

An engineer, who used to run a construction company with several workers, after his business went bankrupt, fell into a state of depression and blew himself up, with an improvised explosive device which hurt only himself.^[2]

Something of the life of this failed businessman, the Libyan Mohammed Game, appears in the press:

"«Help us find a more dignified house. There are six of us living here and we don’t even have a bathroom», this failed 37-year-old electronic engineer – a flop even as a bomber – had  complained a few months ago to a journalist of «Cronaca Qui».

He had moved into the first floor flat seven years ago together with Giovanna M., his Italian partner, never a Muslim, by trade a housecleaner and careworker for the elderly, in love with the wrong man after having left another man with whom she had had two children, Davide aged ten and  Alessandro aged nine. Islam was born six years ago, Omar three. All lived together in that two-room house on the ground floor, stair D, where the police raid found nothing. Not a trace of a leaflet, proclamation, anything leading to Al Qaeda rather than to the ravings of a frustrated man angry at the world."

Let us be careful to avoid falling into the usual game where one side paradoxically exalts a person who does a deed like this, painting him as a terrible fanatic; while the other side denigrates him as a poor fool. Whatever the reasons may be, Mohammed Game took responsibility for his decision.

However, this case sheds interesting light on the whole issue of "Islamic terrorism" in Italy.

The attack against the Santa Barbara carabinieri office in Milan is the first case of "Islamic terrorism" in Italian history.

And it took place more or less as one would have expected.

After ten years of expulsions, arrests, ceaseless police surveillance, people refusing to rent you rooms, MP’s shouting that you are a danger to mankind, TV programmes attacking you every day, bookshops full of books describing you as a monster, wars around the world against people of your same faith… there is a good statistical likelihood that one out of a million Muslim immigrants will go berserk.

Going berserk is something which takes no organization, and is unpredictable. The Milan bomber was never trained in any of the "Jihad schools" and was certainly not looking for heaveny virgins promised him by some bearded preacher. Mohammed Game blew up (mentally) watching the news on TV. That is the very watered down and sterilized description of what the Italian military expedition is doing in Afghanistan.

It is tragically impossible to do anything, about something which however comes into your home every day. A foreign national cannot even vote for a party which condemns the Afghan expedition, and Mohammed Game probably was lacking in the skills needed to let out useless steam on a keyboard, as we can do.

We have always said that the objectives of armed actions are military objectives. Even on September 11, 2001, the targets were the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, the nearest thing to the economic heart of the planet.

One can be certain that their small Iraqi equivalents were the very first buildings to be bombed during the US attack on Iraq in 2003.

Mohammed Game did not try to strike against the famous "symbols of the West" so dear to the media – a painting by Raffaello, say, or a girl with a miniskirt and an iPod sipping a whisky. Even in his clearly troubled mind, he decided to strike against an undisputably military target: the barracks from which the Carabinieri left who are taking part in the occupation of Afghanistan. Rightly, the inquiring magistrate has accused him of strage (attempted "massacre"), but not of terrorism.

This does not mean that Mohammed Game might not have blown himself up, through his incompetence, on the way from home to the target, perhaps on board a crowded bus. However, this does not mean that Muslims hate buses.

In the meantime, Mara Carfagna, starlet and escort-cum-Minister for Equal Opportunity, has proposed banning "niqab and burqa" in Italy’s schools.

"Not as religious symbols, like the veil for example, but because of the stories they hide, stories of women who are denied basic rights like education or the right to work, stories of violence and humiliation".

Yes, that is right: in the name of the right to education, students wearing "niqab and burqa" will be expelled from the schools.^[3]

Careful, however, there is a trick here: the escort-cum-minister was simply speaking "aside during a conference", a typical Italian way for politicians to say foolish things without having to actually follow them up.

Notice the surprising erudition of Mara Carfagna: if they put such complicated words as "niqab and burqa" (the former, a veil covering everything but the eyes, the latter a lacework also covering the eyes), even distinguishing them from a "veil", there  must be a reason. Actually, there are two.

The first is that in Italy, the veil or foulard will never be forbidden, due to strong opposition by the Catholic Church, since it would no longer be possible to allow nuns to cover their hair.

The second reason is that my Muslim friends confirm that in all of Italy, there is not one single student who wears a niqab or burqa.

In other words, even if the law did pass, nothing would change (and thus create problems for Ms Carfagna). Yet, Mara Carfagna manages to turn nothing (zero girls waring a  niqab, zero girls wearing a burqa) into a cataclysmic danger:

"Time is running out, there is an attempt to overwhelm centuries of civilization, to set up a regime denying rights- concluded Carfagna – we must not let this happen".

Unlike many others, I admire Ms Carfagna. She has clearly understood how to do politics: making up stories, putting her adversaries up against the wall (nobody will dare to be "on the side of the burqa"), dramatizing dangers which do not exist and playing on collective fears.

The pity is that maybe another Mohammed Game is watching her on TV – vaguely Muslim but very angry, and running out of his supply of other cheeks to turn.

Notes

[1] Bursting into mosques looking for "hate literature" is a typical amusement for Italian reporters.

[2] He lost his eyesight and a hand, trying to blow up the detonator in the box full of nitrates he was carrying, when a policeman ordered him to stop as he was going into a police station.

The police have arrested two alleged accomplices and seized explosive. Of course, the bomber must have picked up the explosives somewhere, and maybe a chemist can clarify the peaceful uses of nitrate. However, the alleged accomplices apparently did nothing to hide themselves.

[3] Speaking of the basic right to education, we may remember the attempt by the mayor of Milan, member of Carfagna’s same party, to forbid children of irregular immigrants from enrolling in kindergarten.