An Italian award-winning photographer, Nicolo Degiorgis, has demonstrated the contrast of the peace of prayer with the tension of politics in his new book, Hidden Islam, which focuses on how Muslims pray in Italy. The photographer highlights the problem Italian Muslims face in finding a suitable place for worship, leaving them with no choice but to pray in garages, gyms and shops. “In Italy the right to worship, without discrimination, is enshrined within the constitution. There are 1.35 million Muslims in Italy and yet, officially, only eight mosques in the whole country,” Martin Parr wrote in introduction to Nicolo Degiorgis’s book, which received an award at the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival.
ISLAMIC MARRIAGES TO BE OFFICIALLY RECOGNISED IN SOUTH AFRICA
The South African government has taken a historic step and provided the Islamic marriage opportunity to the country’s Muslim population, most of which came from Malia islands and have faced enormous difficulties for nearly 300 years. A hundred Imams were assigned in Cape Town to solemnise Islamic marriage, reports said on 11 July.
Imams go on negotiations with the government to renew former unrecognised marriages to official ones. Muslims’ marriage ceremonies in Cape Town organised in mosques or wedding ceremony halls. The crucial part is vocally expressing approval of the marriage by both sides. Imam confirms the marriage and the Qur’ān is read aloud.
FAR-RIGHT GROUP ‘INVADES’ MOSQUE IN LONDON
Britain First, a far-right group in the UK which on a number of occasions have ‘invaded’ mosques around the country, charged into a mosque in south-east London, where they gave the imam a seven-day warning to remove signs regarding gender segregation. The group’s so-called “Kent battalion activists” stormed into the mosque’s prayer hall with their shoes on, refusing requests from an elderly man to show respect to the place of worship, reports said on 16 July.
The group led by Paul Golding, a former British Nationalist Party councillor, and hardline evangelical Jim Dowson, who was once in charge of the party’s finances, have in the past admitted to pursuing a “holy war” on the streets of Britain on Channel Four News.