APCOM

Entering the mosque, listening to the Imam's sermon, not only to enrich one's own knowledge, but also to open up to dialogue with Islamic communities.

However this path is not short, according to "Dentro la Moschea", Yahya Pallavicini's book. The latter was presented on March 12th in Milan, in the building Otto Colonne di Palazzo Reale's room. Head of the Municipal council of Milan, Manfredi Palmeri was also present.

The book by Pallavicini, head of the Mosque on Via Medea in Milan, is a trip into a mosque. It's a trip to discover who visits it, how and when one prays, and understand what the Italian Imams are trying to communicate. The book contains 25 sermons, which describe just the above mentioned, showing a "a moving picture of Islam".

"This book, Pallavicini said during his intervention, puts us in front of all that there is inside a mosque," and Milan has to be thankful to Pallavicini, because he helps us to understand what the Imam thinks. But this book, also has an absolute value for those who are not Muslims, because it becomes a tool of interreligious dialogue.

The book presents itself as a number of personal accounts of faith by men and women "who he was able to meet during their path of spiritual growth", said Shaykh Pallavicini, Yahya's father and head of the Italian "Coreis". "And not only for the unusual condition of being an Italian muslim, but for the uniqueness of their vocation in meeting God".

Coreis is the religious Islamic communit, which in 1993 began collecting personal accounts and information of the Islamic population in Italy and in the West. Yahya Pallavicini is its vicepresident.

Appreciation for Coreis' project was also expressed by the vice president of the European Commission, Marco Frattini. Frattini, in occasion of the presentation of the book sent a message to the author, which said: "how far we are from the religions of intolerance, from violence and fanaticism, so close we have to be, believers or not, to the word of God, which grows in a world of freedom and knows how to unite the teachings of moral and civil virtue to the mistery of the faith, helping the faithful to be an integral part of a community and national culture which must present itself in the context of a multiple identity.