How a kidnapped aid worker who converted to Islam shook Italy

In November 2018, Italian aid worker Silvia Romano was kidnapped by gunmen linked to the Somali armed group al-Shabab in northeast Kenya. At the time of the attack, which left several people wounded, Romano was volunteering for an Italian NGO in an orphanage in the village of Chakama.

The news of Romano's kidnapping caused not only sadness and worry, but also controversy in her home country. Right-wing politicians and public figures, and some members of the public, accused the aid worker of "looking for trouble" by going to Kenya, and claimed she should have "stayed in Milan and helped people there".

They called her decision to go to Kenya as a volunteer aid worker an expression of "bravado" and claimed she was seeking attention. These accusations were countered by outraged liberals who talked of the "importance" of idealistic youngsters like Romano going abroad on voluntary aid missions, and helping those in need in other countries.

In the following weeks, the news cycle moved on and the discussions about Romano, and the work she had been doing in Kenya, slowly came to an end. 

Las month, however, Romano once again found herself at the receiving end of right-wing attacks, this time not only for going to Kenya and "causing trouble", but also for voluntarily choosing to convert to Islam during her ordeal.

The outpouring of Islamophobia and hate
On May 9, when Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced on Twitter that Romano had finally been freed, most Italians were overjoyed. Soon after, however, it was revealed that the aid worker had chosen to become a Muslim during her 18 months in al-Shabab captivity and that she had changed her name to "Aisha". This dampened the celebratory mood and led many on the Italian right to once again question Romano's motivations for going to Kenya in the first place. 

After Romano landed in Rome wearing a light green jilbab - a loose-fitting robe that covers the entire body and is often worn by Somali women - her conversion swiftly became the sole focus of right-wing Italian media outlets. They published "before and after" photos showing the aid worker's "transformation" and embarked on a quest to shed light on "the mystery surrounding the conversion": Was she forcibly converted? Was she brainwashed? Was she a victim of Stockholm syndrome?

"We have freed a Muslim woman," declared conservative daily Libero Quotidiano, as if only Christian Italian citizens, and not Muslim ones, deserve to be protected by the government of the country they call home.

"Islamic and happy. Silvia the ungrateful," read the front-page headline of an article by Alessandro Sallusti, the editor of Il Giornale. In the same article, Sallusti accused Romano of wearing the "jihadist uniform of the enemy" and claimed her conversion is as absurd as a Jew coming back from a concentration camp dressed as a Nazi.

Several right-wing politicians also used Romano's ordeal and conversion as an opportunity to promote Islamophobic views. The leader of the right-wing League party, Matteo Salvini, for example, framed Romano's kidnapping and conversion within an alleged clash of civilisations, and claimed that "Islamic terrorists" have won "the cultural battle in the name of the Islamic veil and conversion". Salvini's deputy, Alessandro Pagano, meanwhile, branded Romano "the new terrorist" during a parliamentary session.

The right-wing media's aggressive and accusatory coverage of Romano's release and conversion to Islam, coupled with prominent League politicians' hateful and discriminatory comments, exposed how entrenched Islamophobia has become in Italy.

But, Romano was not only targeted by these usual suspects. 

Some Italian feminists also attacked the young aid worker for converting to Islam and wearing "Islamic clothes". 

Prominent feminist historian, Nadia Riva, who in the 1980s was one of the founders of the influential and radical feminist group the Cicip & Ciciap club, for example, in a Facebook post referred to Romano as "a smiling woman in a green recycling bag". Claiming Romano's jilbab is a symbol of male oppression rather than an expression of her religious identity, she explained that she could not believe a woman would choose to dress that way willingly.

Many Italian feminists came to Romano's defence and distanced themselves from Riva's controversial comments. However, the fact that some prominent Italian feminists found it appropriate to attack a fellow woman because of what she chooses to believe in and the way she chooses to dress demonstrated how embedded is the idea of moral superiority in parts of the Italian and Western feminist movement.

Reproducing 'white saviour myths'
Italian liberals and the left wing openly condemned the hate Romano received for converting to Islam and celebrated her return home. Their response to the hateful right-wing rhetoric surrounding the aid worker's liberation, however, was equally problematic, albeit for different reasons.

In their response to the whole Romano saga, Italy's liberal media organisations and public figures tried to highlight the human side of the story, and celebrated her safe return home without any reservations. But in their undoubtedly well-intentioned celebration, they promoted deep-rooted and highly damaging stereotypes about Africa. They not only portrayed the continent as a savage and abandoned place, but they also implied Africans are in need of "white saviours".

Liberal newspapers published countless images showing Romano surrounded by Kenyan children, but did not attempt to preserve the privacy of these children as they would normally do with European ones. These images, and articles that accompanied them, were perfect reproduction of decades of "white saviour" myths, which talked of selfless Western men and women who travelled to Africa to "save" African children with no agency.

Italy's leading centre-left daily La Repubblica even published an article claiming Romano "was betrayed by the same village she wanted to save" - a claim that reaffirms baseless and damaging tropes about the ungratefulness of African people in the face of Western attempts to "save" them.

One of the most obvious reproductions of the "white saviour myth" came from best-selling author and vocal anti-fascist Roberto Saviano. In an article published in La Repubblica, and on his Facebook page, Saviano portrayed Africans - perhaps unintentionally - as people living in a desolated place who are in need of help and guidance from the West.

In his article welcoming Romano back to Italy, Saviano described the Kenyan children she worked with as "forgotten and abandoned" and claimed they will likely become al-Shabab fighters themselves in the absence of Western "saviours" like Romano. Ignoring Kenya's own fight against the armed group, he even went as far to say "a young European woman who arrives unarmed to stay next to the children" like Romano is the "great enemy" of such terrorist organisations. 

This narrative is not only problematic and simplistic, but also misleading and paternalistic. It presents a decontextualised image of the region and ignores the role Europeans themselves played, and continue to play, in the ongoing calamity in the Horn of Africa. 

Indeed, according to a study released in 2018, many of the orphaned children in Kenyan towns like Chakama will not go to Somalia to fight for al-Shabab, but will most probably move to nearby international tourist spots like Malindi, Mtwapa or Mombasa to try and make a living. There, the biggest threat facing them would not be the possibility of radicalisation, but being pushed into the sex trade. In these regions, it needs to be noted, the main clientele of sex workers are mainly European sex tourists, including Italians.

The Italian media's coverage also ignored Italy's past crimes in Africa. As newspapers and TV channels discussed the role Turkey played in the liberation of Romano, and claimed the country is now "the new master of the Horn of Africa", their nostalgia for those times when Italy had power over these parts of Africa was apparent. In these think pieces, of course, there was no mention of the disaster Italy's colonial enterprise caused in the Horn of Africa in the last century.

In the shortage of relevant thoughts and critical commentaries, one of the few voices out of the chorus was that of Somali-Italian writer Igiaba Scego, who took the opportunity to remind people, "Italians must be decolonised from their own colonial imagination. Even in language we carry too many legacies, not only of fascism, but of the typical rhetoric of the nineteenth century."

There is not much to be gained from questioning Romano's motivations for embarking on a volunteer aid mission to Kenya after her 18-month ordeal and safe return home. We should do everything we can to shield this young woman from the attacks of Italian right-wing media and politicians, who target her only because she chose to convert to a religion that they see as "the enemy". 

Nevertheless, we should also not ignore the damaging narratives that some liberal media organisations and figures utilise in their defence of the aid worker.

While we should reject Islamophobia - whether it comes from right-wing figures or renowned feminists - we should also challenge discourses that present millions of Africans as savages who need to be saved by altruistic Westerners.

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Burqa Ban: Italy and elsewhere

Plans by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s allies to prosecute Muslim women for wearing burqa, a loose outfit covering the whole body from head to toe, is infuriating the political establishment in the southern European country.

"A ban (on the burqa) would be xenophobic and discriminatory,” Mario Scialoja, the chair of the Islamic Culture Center of Italy, told Reuters late Thursday, October 8.

“The existing law should be enforced."

The far-right Northern League is pressing to amend a 1975 law to prosecute Muslim women for wearing burqa.

The law slaps hefty fines and up to two years in jail on people covering their faces with anything preventing their identification by police.

But the Northern League is now proposing to amend the law to ban “garments worn for reasons of religious affiliation”.

The far-right party also wants to remove from the law the expression “justified cause”, which has prompted courts to allow burqa on religious grounds.

Scialoja warned that a burqa ban would stigmatise Muslims, calling on Italian authorities to treat Muslim women with respect.

"We say no to a new law."

The burqa has been a hot issue in many European countries.

Last month, the Italian spa resort town of Montegrotto Terme banned the burqa.

A French MP has also proposed a ban on the wearing, sparking outcry among the Muslim minority and across the Muslim world.

Italy has a Muslim population of some 1.2 million, including 20,000 reverts, according to unofficial estimates.

France, whose five million Muslims make up Europe's largest Islamic minority, banned Muslim headscarves in state schools in 2004 and a recent proposal for a burqa ban has sparked outcry in the Muslim world.

Verily, we live in an age of miracles; thus, none other than Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi, the leading religious figure of Al-Azhar, was, just the other day, “reportedly angered” when he toured a school in Cairo and saw a girl wearing “niqab” which means that her face was masked or possibly that she was wearing a full head, face, and body covering.

“Sheikh Tantawi, regarded by many as Egypt’s Imam and Sunni Islam’s foremost spiritual authority, asked the teenage girl to remove her veil saying: “The niqab is a tradition, it has no connection with religion.” The imam instructed the girl, a pupil at a secondary school in Cairo’s Madinet Nasr suburb, never to wear the niqab again and promised to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against its use in schools. The ruling will not affect use of the hijab, the Islamic headscarf worn by most Muslim women in Egypt.

Following the imam’s lead, Egypt’s minister of higher education is to ban female undergraduates from wearing the niqab from the country’s public universities, Cairo’s Al-Masri Al-Yom newspaper reported. “

Again, don’t rejoice too soon.

Even the very influential Sheikh Tantawi has his fundamentalist detractors who have excoriated him for supporting France’s ban on hijab in public schools and for shaking hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres. And, clearly, the Egyptian government is unhappy about the gathering forces of Islamic fundamentalism which consistently manipulate women and women’s clothing as symbolic political statements. Some have even called for more severe Islamic clothing for women in which only one eye (Algerian style) can show. The Egyptian government understands that it is at risk vis a vis Islamic fundamentalists.

Now, some European politicians understand this too.

Our thoughts are with Italian Quake victims

Italy's worst earthquake in 30 years has killed 289 people and left 28,000 homeless. Our thoughts are with them.

The fourth Caliph, Ali (raa) said, A person is either your brother in faith or in humanity. We do feel for our brothers and sisters in Italy.

These disasters are reminder from Allah about the coming of the day of Judgement. There is a chapter in Quran that is called Al-Zalzala (the Earthquake). This is the 99th chapter and it paints a scary image of the day of Judgement. The verses are as follows:

When the earth is shaken to her (utmost) convulsion,


And the earth throws up her burdens (from within),


And man cries (distressed): 'What is the matter with her?'-


On that Day will she declare her tidings:


For that thy Lord will have given her inspiration.


On that Day will men proceed in companies sorted out, to be shown the deeds that they (had done).


Then shall anyone who has done an atom's weight of good, see it!


And anyone who has done an atom's weight of evil, shall see it.

Immigration in Italy

Lampedusa is a small island close to Sicily. It is the closest Italian destination to Tunisia and Libya, countries from where most immigrants set out for Italy, risking their lives in insidious boat trips across the Mediterranean Sea. The campus is designed to shelter 800 people where they are supposed to remain for 60 days. A CPA's resident should be set free only if he/she meets the refugees standards’ requirements, otherwise they should be sent back home. However, there are currently 1800 people and most of them are kept longer than expected because they arrive without valid identity documents. Consequently, the identification process lasts for too long and is tiring.

The Italian Government spends 5.4 million Euros a year to run the Lampedusa shelter, where last year alone 33, 000 people were sheltered. On one hand, the Italian government blames Libya for not taking the necessary measures to curb illegal immigration streams from its shores. On the other hand, Libyan officials, according to various Italian press reports, claim they don’t have enough financial resources nor the required technology (like satellite surveillance) to achieve an effective surveillance along its seashores. In a move towards achieving a common goal, Italy and Libya signed the “Bengasi Accord” on August 30, 2008. Under which the Italian government will finance the development of Libyan infrastructures by 5 billion US dollars for the next 25 years against an effective implementation on the Libyan part to restrain illegal immigration.

A “ticket” to ride the boat, according to survivors who made it to Lampedusa from Libya, ranges from 500 to 1000$. The sailors use a small boat to board 50 to 60 souls, regardless of the gender, origin, and health conditions. While crossing the Mediterranean Sea, they are not fed, and some people, especially women, die because of the frosty temperature.

Issaga, a refugee from Somalia, told Vita Magazine that he had to work for six months in Libya to earn the money needed for going to Italy. "I will never forget," he says, "the fear that seized me and all the people, 45 folks on an eight meters long boat, who were with me. On the boat we had only two options: to live or to die and we could do nothing about it. Just pray. It is hard to go, but it is also hard to stay. After I have been cleared by the authorities, I had to find a job. I spent years to do odd low-paid jobs which Italians would never take. I didn't have a contract, extra hours were not paid, I had no benefits, and several Italians blamed me because they think immigrants are accountable for lowering the working wages for all."

Now Issaga works in an Egyptian restaurant as an assistant manager. Ahmed, the owner of the restaurant, is an Egyptian man who immigrated to Milano 30 years ago. He owns a successful restaurant, he has his own apartment, and he drives a nice car. He has four children who speak Italian better than Arabic.

He is an ideal example of a successful immigrant who worked hard but at the end he made it. But he assures that, "30 years ago the economy was better, it was much easier to get a visa and there were very few immigrants to compete with."

Unfortunately, what many people get on their way is painful death. Last year, according to Interior Affairs Ministry, 646 people died before reaching Lampedusa. In 2007, they were 556. As for all the European countries, last year 1,052 people never made it to the European shores.

Theoretically, the situation for the legal immigrants should be better. However, apparently, this is not the case.

"If we were given the chance to deal with less administrative hurdles and bureaucracy nightmares, we could enjoy a simpler life and therefore be more productive and useful for this country," said Imane, a 25-year-old girl of Moroccan origin, referring to her working visa renewal experience. "I pay 72 Euros a year but it takes something like 13 months to have it renewed and stamped. In the meantime, I cannot travel and every time an officer stops me, it takes me much time to explain to him that I don’t carry my visa with me because it is being renewed. I am lucky because I speak Italian fluently, but those who don’t master the Italian language get in trouble because they are not able to explain that; even if they are not carrying their visa at the moment, they are still legal immigrants," she added.

To make things worse, the Italian government approved a package of a new anti-immigration law that will make visa renewal more costly. Visa holders indeed, besides paying the 72 Euros, are required to pay a 200-Euro visa annually as taxes.

"If I have to pay more money that’s fine, but at least I should get something in return such as good services. No more long queues outside government buildings just to hand out the papers, and no more waiting for 13 months to get their visas renewed. If I spend 200 Euros I expect efficiency, speed and why not, something innovative like getting the visa online," explained Imane. Itis worth mentioning here that with this 200-Euro tax the government will be able to earn 600 hundred millionEuros a year.

According to the latest official statistics released last month, January, 2009, by Caritas Immigration Annual Report on Immigration, there are nearly 3.9 million legal immigrants working and living in Italy. They represent 6.7 percent of the total population. In the year 2000, they were almost one million and a half. Albanians are considered the biggest community in Italy (625,000 people). Moroccans are the second biggest Muslim community with 366,000 people, and then come the Chinese and Ukrainians estimated by 150,000 persons. There are other nationalities in Italy estimated as follows: 93,600 Tunisians, 69,572 Egyptians, and 3,569 Lebanese.

Generally speaking, immigrants work in restaurants, construction companies, agriculture and in distribution-supply chains. But there are also 20,000 immigrants who work at hospitals and elderly shelters. Many banks hire immigrants to run remittance services. For many immigrants, it is not easy to get loans to start private business or to buy a house. Several well-educated immigrants seek new professional opportunities as cultural mediators at police headquarters and at some government offices.

In addition, foreign workers produce 9 percent of the Italian GDP. They are spenders, savers, and entrepreneurs as well. There are 165,115 companies registered under migrated owners at the Italian chambers of commerce all over Italy. They positively contribute to public prosperity. In Lombardy, the most productive region of Italy, 45.6 percent of the workforce is immigrants. In Milan, one out of seven people is a foreign worker and 800,000 working immigrants joined the big three Italian labor unions.

The real driving force towards a more multiethnic Italian society is the offspring of the early immigrants, widely known as the second generation "2G". Those young people, indeed, represent the biggest social contribution of immigrants to the Italian society. Born in Italy, their upbringing is very unique and fascinating. They represent a new category of citizens who keep the roots of their parents' ethnicity, but grow their branches over the country that adopted them, Italy. They represent the bridge that links Italy with other counties. Not surprisingly, 2G youth already speak three languages in their early age, and their everyday life is featured by a mixed identity based on the compromise between their personal aspirations and their parents' expectations.

The current law does not grant Italian citizenship to those second generation boys and girls till they are 18 years old, even if they are born in Italy. Another obstacle facing 2G immigrants is that if they leave the country for more than three months, they would lose their Italian nationality and they have to live other "non-stop" 18 years in Italy in order to regain their Italian passport.

Lubna, an Italian girl of Syrian origin, told me she feels Italian but, unlike her classmates and friends, she spends much time balancing between her Syrian heritage and her Italian upbringing. “That makes me a global citizen. I feel that I belong to two cultures. I feel very rich inside because I learned a great deal of both cultures," Lubna explained. "And when I talk to my relatives around the world, I feel like I have visited those countries without having traveled there,” She added. Lubna's ambition is to work in hospitals as a cultural mediator who facilitates communication between Italian doctors and Arab women who don’t speak Italian. She elaborates that job saying, “The Italian language and the veil I wear are my best assets. When Arab women see me next to a male Italian doctor, they feel right away more reassured and calm. My presence in a hospital room makes these women at ease." Indeed, many hospitals have to rely on young women like Lubna to overcome language barriers and sensitive cultural discrepancies between Italian doctors and Muslim female patients.

Fortunately, some politicians from both coalitions, right and left, have recognized the unjust burden second generation immigrants are carrying. The President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Mr. Gianfranco Fini, has recently urged the governing coalition to consider main changes regarding the current citizenship law; both for early immigrants as well as for 2G Italians. In an open letter published on December 21st, 2008, by one of most well known Italian newspapers La Repubblica, Mr. Fini wrote, "Our society in less than a decade, or maybe now, will not be the same. We are living a time of big migration streams of people, ideas and resources, especially of human resources. That’s why we have to act in accordance with such social development. We cannot let immigration be marginalized. Let’s work for a freer and more open society." With this letter, Mr. Fini tried to spur the debate about the 2G need to be granted the Italian citizenship at the age of ten. While the vast majority of 2G Italians are entering the adult stage, Fini’s call is still frozen because of the unjustifiable absurdity of the Italian politics.

Incestuous Austrians and Italians

First, it was Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who raped and had an incestuous relationship with his daughter. Having kept her locked for 24 years in a cellar, he fathered seven children by her.

A similar case has now come to light in Italy. In this case, the father has been sexually abusing the daughter for 25 years and he even taught his son to do this to his sister and own daughters.

The reason I have put this posting is to make people aware that there are crimes like these which are committed everywhere and by all kinds of people. What if a similar crime was committed by a Muslim?

The gutter press would be all over Muslims maligning Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The far right MP in one of the European country would decide then to make a movie out of this and go for a worldwide tour describing how dangerous Islam is. The trial would continue for months and every minute detail would be available in the newspapers. The press and the Islamophobes would make sure all the dirty linen is washed in the public.

But as none of these cases involved Muslims, they will fade from the public memory soon; till another of these cases come to light. And lets hope that a Muslim is not involved then.

Shall we let Eluana die?

The Italian government has been plunged into a constitutional crisis over the fate of a 38-year-old woman who has been in a coma for the past 17 years. Eluana Englaro was left in a vegetative state after a car crash in 1992. After a decade-long court battle, doctors reduced her nutrition on Friday in preparation for removing her feeding tubes, which her father claims would be in accordance with her wishes.

But in an extraordinary turn of events, the country's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, after consultation with the Vatican, has issued an emergency decree stating that food and water cannot be suspended for any patient depending upon them, reversing the earlier court ruling. On issuing the emergency decree, Berlusconi declared: "This is murder. I would be failing to rescue her. I'm not a Pontius Pilate."


Islam Online has a very detailed section called 'Euthanasia: Types and Rulings'. Regarding the situation at hand, it mentions:

As for facilitating death by withdrawing artificial resuscitating apparatus from the patient who is clinically regarded as “dead” or “practically dead” because of the damage to the brainstem or brain, with which human beings live and feel; if the action of the physician is merely stopping the treatment instruments, it will be no more than giving up the treatment, in which case his action is legal and permissible, bearing in mind that these instruments can preserve the apparent life of the patient - represented by breathing and circulation - though the patient is actually dead, for he cannot conceive, feel or be sensitive to anything because of the damage of the source of all that, namely the brain. Keeping the patient in that state would waste vital resources and would prevent other maybe curable patients from benefiting from the instruments being occupied for the practically dead patient.

But in the current situation, she is not really brain dead so would leaving her to die be justified?

The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is reported to have said, “Allah created no disease but created something to cure it.” (Reported by Al-Bukhari and Muslim)

In another hadith narrated by al-Tirmidhi we read: “O Allah’s Servants! Seek treatment, for Allah does not create a disease but creates a treatment for it.” In the hadith narrated by Ahmad we read: “Allah created no disease but created something to cure it. Some may know it and some may not.” So these Prophetic hadiths give us hope of discovering cures for what we term today as ‘incurable’ diseases.


You may have also read in past of the news that people who have been in coma for long time came out of it due to some or the other miracle:

From The Times:

A British company is to begin trials of zolpidem on up to 30 patients later this year, such is the promise shown by the drug at temporarily bringing people out of vegetative states.

Louis, a young South African, had been in a coma for more than three years when he was given the pill as a routine sedative in the care home where he was being treated.

To the amazement of his mother and doctor, within an hour he was awake and speaking again. The effects of zolpidem lasted for about four hours, before Louis, who was 31 at the time, slipped back into the permanent vegetative state (PVS). It was the first time that he had shown any awareness of people, and been able to respond to them, since a car crash three years earlier.


From the Independent:

A Polish railway worker has woken after 19 years of a coma to discover that his world has changed beyond all recognition.

"When I went into a coma, there was only tea and vinegar in the shops," Jan Grzebski, now 65, told a Polish news channel.

"Meat was rationed and there were huge petrol queues everywhere."

Mr Grzebski lost consciousness in 1988, after he was hit by a train. Doctors gave him only two or three years to live. But because of the tireless care of his wife Gertruda, who moved him every hour to prevent bedsores, he remained in good health. He was, however, completely removed from the dramatic changes across the world.

After regaining consciousness, he told his family that he had vague memories of family gatherings and of his relatives talking to him, trying to provoke a response. There was plenty for them to tell him about, if they had wished to startle him with amazing news.


From Sunday Express:

GRANDFATHER Sam Carter was rocked out of a 10-week coma by his favourite Rolling Stones song – the first single he bought as a teenager.

Retired baker Mr Carter, 60, lost consciousness after contracting severe anaemia but was jolted back to life when (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction blared into his ears.


From New York Times:

A 38-year-old Sicilian who spent two years in a coma before waking up has said that he heard and understood everything happening around him during the long ordeal, his family said. The man, Salvatore Crisafulli, emerged from the coma, caused by a 2003 road accident, three months ago but began speaking only recently


From the Telegraph:

A woman who was in a coma for six weeks was woken from her condition by her granddaughter’s scream.

Devbai Patel, 56, was left unconscious after she was hit by a lorry in a crash which killed the driver.

Doctors reduced her sedatives to try to rouse her and her family talked to her, but she showed no reaction, so the medical staff suggested she might respond to her granddaughter Leela, aged 23 months.

When they brought Leela in, she screamed to see her grandmother looking so ill, and Mrs Patel immediately opened her eyes.


May Allah help her and her family and make the right decision for her. Amen.