Aid worker’s conversion to Islam spurs hate campaign
When she stepped off a plane in Rome and hugged her family after 18 months of captivity at the hands of an African Islamist terrorist group, Silvia Costanza Romano was all smiles.
Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte and his foreign minister were on the runway to welcome back the 25-year-old aid worker. Church bells in her home town Milan rang as celebrations broke out in a country in dire need of good news after months of coronavirus misery.
A week on, however, Costanza Romano has been condemned as a terrorist in parliament. Bottles have been thrown at her house and she is under police protection amid an online hate campaign after she announced that she had converted to Islam in captivity and taken the name Aisha.
The hostility, which sheds light on Italy’s difficult relationship with Islam, charity workers and women, mounted as reports surfaced that between €1.5 million (NZ$2.7m)-€4m had been paid to the terrorist group alShabaab to secure her release.
‘‘The terrorists have taken the money and have even won the cultural battle of conversion,’’ Matteo Salvini, the leader of the anti-migrant opposition League party, said.
Costanza Romano was kidnapped from a Kenyan village in November, 2018. She was taken to Somalia where she claims that she was treated well by her masked captors who gave her a Koran to read, prompting her voluntary conversion to Islam.
Typical of the outpouring of hatred was a Facebook post by Nico Basso, a councillor in Treviso and former member of the League, who wrote: ‘‘Hang her’’. As Costanza Romano took shelter with her family, men were said to have driven past their house, throwing glass bottles.
Alessandro Pagano, a League MP, provoked uproar in parliament by calling her a ‘‘neoterrorist’’. Salvini took a step back, however. ‘‘Leave Silvia alone to live a long and happy life. Consider the real enemy: fanatical, violent, murderous Islam.’’
Amid the furore Mahmoud Asfa, a Milan imam, said that he doubted Costanza Romano’s conversion was sincere. Her uncle, Alberto Fumagalli, insisted, however, that his niece was a determined person who made her own decisions. ‘‘For a year and a half she had no say in her life,’’ he said. ‘‘Now she has her life back, she is finally free to choose.’’
Laura Boldrini, an MP with the centre-left Democratic Party, said that Italian men who had been kidnapped and converted to Islam had not faced such criticism. ‘‘There is misogyny mixed in with the hostility to Islam as well as hatred of charity workers who are often seen as the enemy of Italy for helping migrants,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s an explosive mix.’’
Rome has denied that a ransom was paid. However, a spokesman for al-Shabaab said that the cash was going on ‘‘guns’’.
Despite opposition from the Italian right to the principle of paying out to win Costanza Romano’s release, previous Right-wing governments in Italy have allegedly also paid for the freedom of hostages.
‘‘Italy and France have been willing payers despite committing at a G8 meeting in 2013 not to,’’ Tom Keatinge, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, said. The Times