About 600 thousand euros, exactly 196.165 euros per year for three years, is the sum that the Qatar government will pay to Italy according to a cooperation agreement on education, universities and scientific research, approved yesterday by the Italian Senate.The agreement, ratified yesterday and discussed previously in the Chamber of Deputies, had been reached on April 16, 2012, during a meeting between the Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and the former Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti at Villa Pamphili in Rome.
Right-wing parties have expressed reservations about the cooperation project with the Qatari regime, known for its support to terrorism, and for promoting radical Islam in Europe. Giorgia Meloni, head of Fratelli d’Italia party, rejected the bill, calling it an act of submission. His league ally Matteo Salvini voted in favor. Ferdinando Casini, a politician from the center-left who openly support the Muslim Brotherhood, described the agreement as one of many, inviting the opposition to vote in favor, but Silvio Berlusconi’s party also abstained.
The agreement provides for the promotion of exchanges and visits of experts in all fields of education, as well as student delegations and sports school groups; encourages the holding of educational, scientific and technical exhibitions at local schools and the exchange of documents and curricula drawn up by the respective school authorities.It also provides that the Parties will encourage participation in joint training courses for teachers, which will have to be agreed with the appropriate exchanges of information.The interference of Qatar in the Italian school system will have an open field from the early years of childhood education, from kindergarten to technical and professional training.
The nature and extent of Qatar’s interference in the Italian education system and the influence Qatari regime exercises through its funding of programs, political speech, and propaganda, represent a great danger for the European country. Qatari regime already has been financing an extensive influence operation inEurope, funding think tanks, activist organizations, football clubs, news agencies, mosques, and now Italian schools, colleges and education programs. The influence operation has also engaged in political activities that benefit Qatar while inculcating virulent anti-Semitism that continues to spread in Italian society.
It falsifies the reality of the facts in the main conflict scenarios. In Libya, a strategic country for Rome, the Doha regime promotes a pro-Daesh and al-Qaeda narrative describing these groups as a legitimate alternative to the Libyan army of Khalifa Haftar. The Qatari royal family actively participated in the destruction of the North African country and its institutions, obscuring the crimes of the terrorist groups it supported. Recently several American organizationsdenounced Qatari interference in the West. The bloody regime of al-Thani family is a top supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its Palestinian wing andterrorist groups like Hamas and al-Qaeda affiliates, among others. Al-Jazeera, one of the mostinfluential Islamist extremist propaganda outlets in the world, is essentially an arm of the Qatari government.
Thanks to Qatari funds the political Islam in Europe is in worrying expansion.“If God wants, we will conquer Rome. Not with the sword, but with the Dawa”, says a hadith of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who preaches from Qatar on Al Jazeera. In recent years, Islamic associations have built dozens of mosques and Koranic schools with funding from Qatar. According to the President of the Union of Islamic Communities of Italy, the Florentine imam IzzedinElzir, only the 25 million from the Qatar Charity NGO have served in the last years to build more than 43 mosques.
By ratifying this agreement, the Italian Senate allows Qatar to boost its image in Italy and to support its foreign agendas in the region, including the Palestinian, Libyan and Syrian files, its involvement in the Arab crisis, its interference in Pakistan – Kashmir cause, and to cover its support to terrorist organizations as well.Extremist ideas will infiltrate more into Italian society.Professors whose salaries, fellowships, or think tanks are funded in part by Qatar are already hesitant to criticize the Muslim Brothers. Many say a sort of taboo has developed against needlessly antagonizing the political Islam by criticizing policy positions that the Italian Government considers red lines, for fear of upsetting the generous donor.
