Italian-Mohammedan

In keeping with my renewed motto for my blog that "no news about Islam is old news", I present this interesting information about certain Italian converts to Islam in the late 90s and the early years of the last decade:

Adel Smith, head of the Italian Muslim Union, son of an Italian father of Scottish origin and an Egyptian mother, converted to Islam in 1987. Smith has been a busy bee for years. Apparently he sued Pope John Paul II for insulting Islam, sued the present Pope while he was still a cardinal in 2000, sued Oriana Fallaci, tried to get crucifixes banned from the school where his children attend, threw a crucifix out of the Catholic hospital window where his mother was being treated; and in 2001, demanded the destruction of a fifteenth-century fresco that shows Muhammad in Dante's Hell. (An interesting sidelight to that last demand of Adel Smith: the sleepy little chapel in Bologna, Italy, that houses that 15th-century fresco has been the active target of more than one plot by Islamic terrorist cells -- one in 2002 by a cell with a network of members from Italy, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain; and one in 2006, whose members also targeted the subway system in Milan. See my previous article, Islam and the Psychology of Satan: The Tragicomedy of Hell on Earth, for more details.)

This Adel Smith also got into a physical scuffle with a "right-wing" columnist on Italian television in 2003; and then, a week later, from the same BBC report "more than 20 members of a neo-Fascist group stormed into the studios of Telenuovo, a local Verona TV station, attacking Mr Smith and his associate Massimo Zucchi during a live chat show." (Adel Smith was apparently only "roughed up and splattered with eggs".)

I wonder if that group was really "neo-Fascist"; the BBC does not justify their label with any evidence. According to the National Catholic Reporter, the attackers were from "the ultra-right Forza Nuova movement..." According to the "neo-Fascist" group Forza Nuova's own website, this is their position on Islam:

-Total interdiction of Islamic immigration
-Deny Turkey's entry into the EU
-Deny the vote to immigrants
-Defend the Christian community throughout the world
-Defend European culture
-Defend Italian products and labor
-Protection of the Italian citizen and above all of the Italian family.

...If that's "neo-Fascist", where do I sign up?

Incidentally, according to this Italian website, Adel Smith's bodyguard, Massimo Zucchi has an interesting past -- arrested in 1981 and 1985 for ultra-Leftist terrorism (Red Brigades), then while in prison learned from an ultra-Right fellow inmate about the "grand Jewish plot" which then disposed him (Zucchi) to warm up to Islam, to which he later converted and took the name Abdul Haqq.

And another Italian associate of these two Italian converts is Rosa Petrone, a former nurse of a hospital in Milan who married a Moroccan; apparently she had put in a formal request that the hospital remove crucifixes from the ward (what is it with Muslims and their morbid aversion to crucifixes? there’s a distinctly werewolf and vampire vibe from this...) Her request was refused, she was dismissed, and she joined Adel Smith and Massimo Zucchi in their shenanigans. This site also mentions another Italian, Hamza Roberto Piccardo, secretary of the Union of the Italian Islamic Community, apparently affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood; he converted to Islam at age 30, married a woman from Marrakesh. Also a couple of Italian Muslim "moderates": Abdul Hadi Palazzi, supposedly pro-Israel, and Abd al Wahid Pallavicini, secretary of the Religious Islamic Community, who promotes "dialogue" with Catholics.

(If some of these hybrid Italian-Arabic names were dishes in a restaurant, I think I would need some Pepto-Bismol; though something a bit more... purgative... might be in order.)