The Legal Treatment of Muslim Minorities in Italy Islam and the Neutral State

Islam is a growing presence practically everywhere in Europe. In Italy, however, Islam has met a unique model of state neutrality, religious freedom and church and state collaboration. This book gives a detailed description of the legal treatment of Muslims in Italy, contrasting it with other European states and jurisprudence, and with wider global tendencies that characterize the treatment of Islam. Through focusing on a series of case studies, the author argues that the relationship between church and state in Italy, and more broadly in Europe, should be reconsidered both to secure religious freedom and general welfare. Working on the concepts of religious freedom, state neutrality, and relationship between church and state, Andrea Pin develops a theoretical framework that combines the state level with the supranational level in the form of the European Convention of Human Rights, which ultimately shapes a unitary but flexible understanding of pluralism. This approach should better accommodate not just Muslims' needs, but religious needs in general in Italy and elsewhere.

Foreword, John Witte, Jr.; Introduction; Islam in Italy; The role of state-religion agreements in Italy: an imperfect pluralism; Islam and the state: tradition and modernization; Islam and relations with the Italian state; Making sense of religious freedom for Italian Muslims; The Italian version of state neutrality: ‘laicità’; State ‘laicità’ vis-à-vis the Muslim community’s demands; Conclusion: finding religious freedom in today’s ‘hybridization’; Index.

Andrea Pin is Associate Professor of Comparative Public Law at the University of Padua. A Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and a member of the scientific committee of Oasis International Foundation, he was visiting professor at the Universities of Emory and Notre Dame, visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and clerk justice at the Italian Constitutional Court. He has authored three books and several legal journal articles and book chapters. His works have appeared in Italian, English, French and Spanish.