Controversy in Turin over the prayers and sermon delivered last Friday by imam Brahim Baya at Palazzo Nuovo, one of the university buildings occupied for about ten days as part of the student intifada.
An initiative not appreciated by many and not even by the Minister of University and Research, Anna Maria Bernini, who telephoned the rector, Stefano Geuna. “The event occurred in a situation of occupation by students – explained Geuna – and therefore under the full responsibility of the occupants”.
The note released also states that “for its part, the University of Turin firmly reiterates the secular character of the university institution. The rector and the minister therefore shared a feeling of full condemnation of the incident”.
Universities occupied, Turin like New York: students in tents inside the universities | VIDEO
The imam’s prayer, documented in a video entitled “What Palestine teaches us” and posted on his YouTube channel, took place in the entrance hall of the building in front of around thirty students and faithful, several of whom were of foreign origin. The list of professors who condemned the episode as a “hymn to Jihad” is long.
The imam, very active in Turin for Gaza and responsible for the Taiba mosque in Via Chivasso, said in his sermon that “new Zionists have arrived to take over” Palestine and “to settle in a more vulgar, more criminal colonialism that could exist ” and applauds “Jihad in the highest sense of this term, as an effort to defend one’s rights, as an effort to defend human life, as an effort to defend true peace.”
The councilor for University Law, Elena Chiorino, is very harsh on the incident: “A firm condemnation: this is the result of violent, politicized occupations, which have nothing to do with the defense of rights – said Chiorino – The hymn to Jhiad which took place in the corridors of the University of Turin is an intolerable, shameful episode, which deserves a firm and harsh condemnation. This is a total lack of respect towards the victims of the violence of Islamic fanaticism and it is even more serious that all this happened in front of students at the University of Turin.”
Continue reading TorinoToday news, follow our Facebook page and subscribe to our WhatsApp channel
