“God is One: Allah for Muslims, God for Christians” on an Electoral Poster in Agrigento: Religious Messaging and the Question of Secularism in Italian Local Politics

Credits: nuovogiornalenazionale.com

Some local elections are approaching in Italy and among the various posters I came across I saw the one from the candidate in Agrigento, Carmela Lombardi an Italian woman converted to Islam, with Arabic writing and references to Allah, and I thought about how it is possible to automatically defend all of this in the name of “tolerance”, the state is secular, religion should not even be mentioned, and yet the poster literally says:

God is one: Allah for the Muslim, God for the Christian, but always the same single Creator.

Written both in Italian and in Arabic. This religious quote is not an innocent detail at all.

A person running to enter politics openly uses religious references, wearing the veil and also using the Arabic language.

This is what I find disturbing about political Islam in general: it does not present itself only as a private faith, but as an absolute ruler for the society, morality and legality. It is not simply about personal spirituality, it just forces also about how others should behave, what should be acceptable to say, how society should function.

And the worst part is that many people in the West minimize these signs because they are afraid of appearing intolerant, because if you try to critic this manifest you are probably going to get dismissed with the usual word 'Islamophobia'.

But criticizing a religion does not mean hating the people who follow it, they are two completely different things. We just want to keep our states as secular and not turn them into a religious nation.

I have problems with any religious ideology that claims to enter institutions, influence politics or replace critical thinking with dogma.

The more time we spend pretending not to see the problem, the more religion will enter politics, increasingly influencing all of our lives.

References: https://www.nuovogiornalenazionale.com/carmela-lombardi-porta-allah-su-manifesto-lista-civica-di-agrigento/