Gaddafi says Islam ‘should be religion of Europe’

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s visit to Rome to mark the second anniversary of a friendship treaty with former coloniser Italy stumbled into controversy yesterday after he said Europe should convert to Islam.

Colonel Gaddafi made the comments on Sunday during a lecture to 500 young women hired and paid by an agency to attend his lecture.

“Islam should become the religion of all of Europe,” one of the women quoted Col Gaddafi as saying in the Italian press.

The agency paid the women, mainly students who hire themselves out for advertising of publicity events, €70 or €80 ($90 or $100) to attend and said it would not pay girls who gave their names to the press.

It also told them to dress conservatively for the lecture.

About 200 women yesterday gathered at the Libyan Cultural Centre in Rome to attend a second lecture.

One of the women present said that Col Gaddafi had said at the gathering that “women are more respected in Libya than in the West” and offered assistance in finding Libyan husbands.

“Islam is the last religion and if we are to have a single faith then it has to be in Mohammed,” he said, according to the participant.

The lectures are “a new, humiliating violation of Italian women’s dignity”, opposition lawmaker and former Health Minister Rosy Bindi said.

Col Gaddafi’s show also caused discomfort within the coalition of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a close ally of the Libyan leader.

“Gaddafi’s words show his dangerous Islamisation project for Europe,” said European MP Mario Borghezio of the anti-immigrant Northern League, junior partner in the coalition, according to Il Messaggero.

Carlo Giovanardi, a government undersecretary, tried to stem the criticism, saying Col Gaddafi’s words were simply “a remark made during a private meeting”.

In other controversial comments made earlier this year, Col Gaddafi called for jihad, or holy war, against Switzerland in response to its referendum which banned the construction of minarets in the country.

Col Gaddafi landed in Italy on Sunday to mark the second anniversary of a friendship treaty signed with Mr Berlusconi that drew a line under the countries’ bitter colonial-era relationship.

Ties between Rome and its former colony have deepened since the signing of the accord, with Italy now the third largest European investor in the north African country.

Italy has said it will invest $5 billion and build a 1,700 kilometre highway in Libya to compensate for its three decades of colonisation from 1911 to 1943.

The head of Italy’s energy giant ENI, Paolo Scaroni, called Libya the “pupil of my eyes”, saying the company would invest €25 billion in the country.

Libya also owns about six per cent of Italy’s largest bank, Unicredit.

The two countries also reached an agreement that allows the Italian navy to intercept illegal migrants at sea and return them to Libya, triggering sharp criticism from the United Nations’ refugee agency and human rights groups.

A representative of the Italian bishops’ conference, who was set to meet Col Gaddafi, said he would raise the issue of migrants detained in Libya with him.

“I find it worrisome that we don’t know anything about what happens to those desperate African people arrested by the Libyan police,” Domenico Mogavero said.

Col Gaddafi travelled, as usual, with a Bedouin tent for his accommodation which was pitched in the gardens of the residence of the Libyan embassy in Rome.

In a sign of protest against his visit, an opposition party planted a “tent of legality” in front of the embassy.