Imams and other Religious Authorities in Italy

This article is due to be published in Proceedings of the International Conference on Imams in Western Europe. Authority, Training, and Institutional Challenges, held in Rome at the LUISS “Guido Carli” and John Cabot University, November 5-7, 2014.  SUMMARY: 1. Introduction – 2. The Relationship State-Confessions and Religious Ministers – 2.1. The “Common” Legislation of intese and the 1929 Act – 2.2. State’s Law and Religious Ministers – 3. Imam in Italy. Is that a Religious Minister? – 3.1. The Connection State-Islamic Organizations – 3.2. Islamic Groups as Religious Denominations – 3.3. The Bilateral Legislation – 3.4. A Possible Collaboration – 4. Conclusion.  Abstract: In Italy imams are more than 800 members. As imams, they are almost all self-taught people. As citizens, most of the times they have a precarious job. During the week, they normally take care of things other than religion. They perform religious functions in their spare time. Moreover, to see them working as imams, you have to go down in some underground parking or in apartments converted into mosques, where sometimes you see minaret and other Islamic symbols, but only in either the picture or in the paintings hanging on the wall.In the end of the day, we know little or almost nothing about imams. Besides, the Italian law normally do not recognise them as religious authorities. Nevertheless, as imams they play a very important role in local Muslim communities that, under the pressing process of immigration, hold nowadays more than two millions persons.The paper will analyse the status of Islamic imams in Italy, comparing them with the status of other religious authorities (priests, rabbis, pastors ecc.). In particular, this comparative perspective will be focused on both angles: on the one hand, the research will compare the role of imams with those of religious authorities within their respective community; on the other, we will compare imams with considered the different way through which Italian law treats both imams and other religious authority. This perspective will give us a possibility to underline how both the social context and the Italian legal framework (regulating the State-religions connexions) manage religious claims

Religions and Ethno-Religious Differences in Bosnia and Herzegovina. From Laboratories of Hate to Peaceful Reconciliation

The article, peer reviewed, is due to be published in Twenty Years after Dayton. The Constitutional Transition of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Proceedings of the Conference), LUISS University Press, Rome, 2016SUMMARY: 1. Introduction - 2. The Politicization of Religion and the Nationalization of Confessions - 3. The Place of Religion and Religious Confession - 4. The Constituent (Chosen) People and Religious Power-Sharing Mechanism - 5. The Education System and Religious Education - 6. The Legal Status of Churches and the State-Religions Relationship - 7. Conclusion.ABSTRACT: It would be wrong to understand the Bosnian war (the main source of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s current problems) only in terms of a religious war. Yet, it would also be wrong to adopt the explanation that religion had no role in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s catastrophe. The misfortunes that occurred in the region during the first half of 1990s was in many respects the result of the abuse of the people’s religious identity, relieved through myth and tradition that even today remain important inspirations for the future. In this article the Author analyses the genesis of this situation and, in particular, the radical nationalism of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which since the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia has been strictly related to the processes of politicization of religion. Under this perspective, the main aim of the article is to understand the place and the role of religion and confessions in the Country’s current legal system

The Universal Constitutionalism in an Age of Religious Diversity. Western Secularism Tested by “New” Cultural Conflicts

An abridged version of this article (reported by Prof. Nicola Colaianni, University of Bari “Aldo Moro”) was presented at the Seminar on “Secularism and Liberal Constitutionalism”, held at the University of LUISS “Guido Carli” (Rome) on 6th July 2010.This article is due to be published in the International Review of Sociology, in 2011.SUMMARY: 1. Introduction – 2. Relation-Collaboration between the State and Churches in Constitutional Democracies – 3. The laicité à la française Tested by a Deprivatised Religious Process – 3.1. The French Rigid Secularism. Freedom (of Religion) through the State – 4. Canada’s Open Secularism. The  question of Religious-Based Family Law Disputes – 4.1 Reasonable Accommodation and “New” Religious Nomoi Groups – 5. Collaboration-Relation between the State and Churches in Italy – 5.1. The Italian Secularism Tested by the New “Religious Geography” – 6. Conclusion.Abstract Under the pressing process of immigration and globalisation many Western constitutional democracies have moved from a number of religions, sharing a common culture, to today's age of diversity. As opposed to the past, the current democracies are facing the lack of overlapping consensus over the basic constitutional laws: namely, the meaning and the scope of freedom of religion, secularism, the separation Church-State, equal treatment and the rule of law. This is because individuals often come to adopt their basic values by very different ways. The nature, scope and force of such values are likely to be affected by competing and, sometimes, contested fundamental values and worldviews. From here stems the pressing tension – or dilemma – between “unity” and “diversity”. This essay starts with general considerations about the freedom of religion principle, strictly related with the “separation” as well as “collaboration” between secular States and Churches; then the author analyses three case-studies (France, Canada and Italy), pointing out some specific legal approaches. In particular he focuses the analyses over the French “droit commun”, the Italian ecclesiastic law and the Canadian arbitral tribunals that, especially in family law, allow disputes to be arbitrated using religious jurisdictions

Surrogate-based maximization of belief function for robust design optimization

This paper proposes an approach based on surrogate models to reduce the computational cost of evidence-based robust design optimization. Evidence Theory provides two quantitative measures, Belief and Plausibility, that defines the lower and upper probability that a given proposition is true under uncertainty. The maximization of the Belief is of great interest to the designers because it provides the design solution such that a given proposition on the system budgets is always true, given the current evidence on the set of uncertain design parameters. The paper introduces a novel min-max multi-objective optimization algorithm to maximize the Belief in multiple conicting propositions. Then an approach based on surrogate models is presented to substantially reduce the computational cost associated with the optimization of the design solutions that maximize the Belief in the given proposition. A simple test case of spacecraft system design is presented will illustrate how to apply the proposed approach

Costituzione e religione in Italia al tempo della pandemia

SOMMARIO: 1. Introduzione - 2. Libertà di culto e pandemia - 3. Logica deontica e bilancia costituzionale - 4. Le critiche agli interventi governativi - 5. Logica giuscostituzionale - 6. Libertas ecclesiae e pandemia - 7. Conclusioni e prospettive. Constitution and Religion in Italy in a Time of Pandemic ABSTRACT: In the first half of 2020, in Italy the coronavirus (Covid-19) has spread quickly, putting the country in an unprecedented emergency. From here stemmed the Government’s measures, which were (and are) without parallel in the history of the Italian State. These measures have led to an animated debate, especially when associated to the limitations imposed on the public liturgical life of the Catholic Church. That was also incorporated into the discussion concerning the long-standing principle-method of bilateralism, as established in Articles 7.2 and 8.3 of the Italian Constitution. With this article the Author analyses this debate in the light of the constitutional duty to protect human health, in the individual and collective sense of the terms

La disciplina giuridica delle minoranze religiose (escluse).Le diseconomie esterne del favor religionis

SOMMARIO: 1. Introduzione - 2. Alle radici del pluralismo della disparità - 3. Le definizioni a contrario - 4. Le minoranze nel sentiero del principio di laicità - 5. Le minoranze religiose alle prese con il genus e la species della laicità - 6. La rilevanza legale delle minoranze religiose - 7. L’autonomia delle confessioni diverse - 8. Le diseconomie esterne del diritto comune delle intese - 9. Come ridurre le diseconomie esterne negative - 10. Conclusioni e prospettive. The Legal Discipline of Minority Religions. The External Diseconomy of Italy’s Favor Religionis ABSTRACT: This article analyses the State’s legal discipline regulating minority religions, which are part of the current religious pluralism in Italy. Pluralism is not new in the Italian context. Various minority religions have long been part of the national scene and often enjoyed a level of public consideration far superior compared to their numerical consistency. However, today in Italy there are religious organizations that, in the light of the traditional ex parte Ecclesiæ favor religionis and the method of state-church(es) relations, stress some difficulties of constitutional relevance. In particular, these difficulties have increasingly come to be seen in terms of “negative externalities”: while creating privileges for the Catholic Church and few minority denominations, it produces unreasonable discriminations against all other religions. That is particularly the case of legal status of “new” minority religious, made up mainly of immigrants

Religione e costituzionalismo occidentale. Osmosi e reciproche influenze

Contributo sottoposto a valutazione, destinato alla pubblicazione nell’opera a cura di C. Decaro Bonella, Radici religiose e itinerari costituzionali, vol. I, Islam e Occidente, edito dalla casa editrice Carocci, Roma, 2012.SOMMARIO: 1. Introduzione. – 2. I presupposti teologici. – 3. Tendenza teocratica, ma visione profana dei fenomeni normativi. – 4. La doppia faccia della secolarizzazione. – 5. Il costituzionalismo (medievale) cristiano. – 6. Le origini del costituzionalismo occidentale. Fra apolitismo radicale … – 7. (segue) … e messianismo temporale e rivoluzione scientifica. – 8. Westfalia (1648): la territorializzazione del diritto religioso. – 9. La nuova religione della perfetta ragione. – 10. Dalla fine della sovranità westfaliana, al secondo dopoguerra … – 11. … (segue) e alla questione islamica di questo secolo

Quo vadis. Narrazione del tempo di Nerone. Ovvero la potenza delle parole

SOMMARIO: 1. Preambolo - 2. La potenza delle parole - 3. La forza di un sentimento - 4. Inventarsi la verità - 5. La desacralizzazione di Dio - 6. La sacralizzazione dell’uomo - 7. Epilogo.Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero. The Power of the WordsABSTRACT: Set during the reign of the emperor Nero, Quo Vadis tells the story of the love that develops between a young Christian woman and a Roman officer who, after meeting her fellow Christians, converts to her religion. Underlying their relationship, the novel becomes a good stratagem to emphasize the contrast between the worldly opulence of the Roman Empire and the poverty and spiritual power of the Christians, whose concepts would play a crucial role during the long history of the Western Legal System. With this paper the Author tries to explain how important a novel like Quo Vadis could be in order to better understand the strong impact of the Christian tradition on the history of Western constitutionalism

Tra letteratura, cronaca e politica: strategie contro l'oblio nelle scritture di frontiera

After the failure of the policies against drug trafficking and the consequent rise of extreme violence in the US-Mexico border, many writers have started to investigate the ethical and political responsibility of writing about citizens’ pain caused by this kind of violence. This paper discusses the strategies of writing and social practices of the border writers, both Mexican and Chicanos. In particular, I analyse the function of the detective fiction as a form of social and political complaint and the function of documental poetry. The aim of this literature is not only to present the horror produced by violence, but also to reveal what can remain to the survivors. The experimentalism of the detective fiction, for example, explains how the simple resolution of any detective case is not enough, if the risk is after all the oblivion. Through the theory of representation of pain by Susan Sontag and the concept of opacity of the subject to itself stated by Judith Butler, the aim is to demonstrate how this authors can avoid the risk of the “reification” of pain.Dopo il fallimento delle politiche contro il narcotraffico in Messico, insieme al conseguente aumento della violenza alla frontiera tra Messico e Stati Uniti, molti autori hanno cominciato a discutere sulle implicazioni etiche e politiche della scrittura che vuole raccontare l’orrore prodotto dalla ferocia della guerra tra i narcos e l’esercito. L'intento di questo saggio mira ad analizzare le strategie di scrittura e di pratica sociale degli autori di frontiera, messicani e chicani. In particolare, si fa riferimento alla poesia documentale e all’uso del poliziesco come denuncia sociale e politica. L’intento di queste nuove scritture non è soltanto quello di mostrare l’orrore della violenza, quanto piuttosto quello di rivelare ciò che resta a quanti sopravvivono a essa. Lo sperimentalismo del poliziesco, per esempio, racconta come la semplice risoluzione del caso non sia abbastanza se il rischio è, dopotutto, l’oblio. Attraverso la teoria sulla rappresentazione del dolore di Susan Sontag e il concetto di opacity of the subject to itself di Judith Butler, cercheremo di analizzare il modo in cui le proposte di questi autori tentano di eludere il pericolo della reificazione del dolore

Atheism and the Principle of Laïcité in France. A Shifting Process of Mutual Adaptation

SUMMARY: 1. Introduction - 2. The Vertical and Horizontal Influences - 3. Atheism, laïcité and Church - 4. Atheism, laïcité and Islam - 5. Today’s Popular Sources of Atheism - 6. Conclusion. ABSTRACT: With this article, the Author outlines the legal issues involving the atheism in France, analysing them in the light of the principle of laïcité. France has a long history of criticism of religion. Many philosophes of the Enlightenment, for example, have provided the classical writings in this field. In this sense, they were able to aliment two major streams of thought of the magmatic French atheism: one is based on the horizontal influences arising from the effect of increasing worldwide travel with the discovery that people do not necessary share the same views and beliefs about the nature of human being; the other is centred on vertical arguments bubbling up from the past in a very form of scepticism and realism. With its multi-faceted and articulated view, the French atheism has also been promoted by a number of movements devoted to arguing the case for non-belief and for its political expression in laïcité. In this manner, the Author tries to demonstrate that, since the Great Revolution and during the long history of the French constitutional system, laïcité de combat and atheism has been influencing each other in a constantly shifting process of mutual adaptation