The Pakistani Zulfiqar Khan, imam of the mosque in rue Jacopo di Paolo in Bolognawas taken to the police station to be excluded. The news was announced in a press release in which his defender, Francesco Murru, spoke of “the return to a police state and the prosecution of crimes of opinion”. The Minister of the Interior signed a decree of expulsion from the national territory for reasons of state security: it should be noted that Zulfiqar expressed a fundamentalist vision of the concept of jihad and, among other things, exalted the martyrdom and work of the mujahideen in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, claiming support for Hamas.
The minister Matteo Piantedosiin the expulsion decree, underlines how, since the fall of 2023, he had stood out for his “increasing ideological fanaticism” and for his “propensity for radical positions”, characterized by a strong anti-Western resentment And anti-Semitic and a homophobic and anti-feminist rhetoric. In one of his sermons, it is added, he urged the Muslim faithful to fight the state's claim to impose the payment of taxes, because the resources must remain within the Muslim community. During a meeting in a center in Bologna, he reportedly defined homosexuality as “an illness to be cured” which every Muslim has the right to oppose “to avoid catastrophic consequences such as the very extinction of the human race”.
In some videos published on social networks, between November 2023 and April 2024, he accused the Americans, Germans, French, English and Italians of supporting “impure Zionists” and in another he invoked Allah to destroy the oppressors , that is to say the Western States. who support Israel. This could also generate proselytism and contacts with foreigners revealed in surveys to belong to “ultra-radical Islam” circles and who are capable of encouraging the infiltration of politico-religious and paraterrorist organizations in the Bologna region.
This 54-year-old Pakistani, who entered Italy in 1995, holds a residence permit which was withdrawn at the same time as his expulsion. The provision must now be validated in court and can be appealed to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court. In June, the Bologna imam sued the Prime Minister's undersecretary, Alessandro Morelli, and Israel's honorary consul, Marco Carrai, for defamation. Then, the minister and the deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini demanded his expulsion on social networks.
“From the documentation – explains the lawyer – we can deduce that the motivations expressed by Minister Matteo Piantedosi are completely generic and devoid of evidentiary basis. Fortunately, we live in a state of law in which the judiciary will have to assess the validity of this measure. » The imam, underlines the note from Khan and his defense, is designated as socially dangerous “solely for having, within the framework of his activity as a religious leader, expressed personal opinions in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. In addition, he is accused of using discriminatory remarks against homosexuals and women during his sermons (always in Italian), quoting the sacred books of the Bible and the Koran. Nothing more than what illustrious Catholic prelates and representatives have already done in their public homilies, but that does not mean that they are or have been expelled from our country.
At this point, continues lawyer Murru, “one could maliciously think that Matteo Salvini's tweet, in which he called for the expulsion of Khan, was carried out with the expulsion order notified today. The act of Minister Piantedosi therefore appears, in addition to responding to the demands made by his colleague Matteo Salvini, also as a measure of retaliation against Zulfiquar Khan, guilty of having turned to the criminal justice system to obtain justice.
