DAR AL HARB - ITALY: MOSLEMS ARE 2% OF ITALY'S POPULATION, BUT 30% OF THEIR PRISON POPULATION

In a Prison's Halls, the Call to Islam
By Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer

MILAN, Italy -- The guards, heavy brass keys swinging from their belts, open and shut the metal gates to each floor of the labyrinthine Bollate prison as the Muslim call to prayer echoes in the corridors. Prisoners rush to the makeshift mosques that have sprouted in every building.

At the end of the hall on the fourth floor of Building 1, a hand-lettered paper sign proclaims, in Italian, moschea — mosque. Furnishings inside are sparse, just three green prayer rugs, pointing eastward, and on the wall a plaque with verses from the Koran.

Abdelfattah Jendoubi, serving a sentence on drug charges, throws on a dishdasha, pulls off his shoes and makes his way to the room.

The 42-year-old Tunisian is joined by two other men. He is apologetic, saying turnout is better on Fridays. Generally, though, younger Muslims in the prison are not very religious, he says.

He hopes to change that.

"I want to teach the young beautiful things," he says, but it is unclear whether authorities, who lack Arabic speakers to monitor his preaching, would agree with his definition of beauty. "They have to change their lives. God wants them to leave the life of crime."

Jendoubi's mission is a difficult one: reaching out to the young men confined within these sterile walls on the outskirts of a city known the world over as Italy's vibrant fashion capital. About 30% of the inmates in Bollate are Muslim, officials say; that's in a country where Muslims make up just 2% of the population of 58 million, although there is a higher concentration of them in northern Italy around Milan.

Their burgeoning numbers in prison are a reproach to Europe's efforts to integrate its immigrants, and a boost to radical imams and hard-core militants who use cellblocks to attract followers and spread a doctrine of violence.

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Pertinent Links:

1) In a Prison's Halls, the Call to Islam