The government of Italy has expelled Imam Zulfiqar Khan this week following calls from Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini to remove the Pakistani national over his radical Islamist preachings.
Khan, 54, the imam of the Jacopo di Paolo mosque in Bologna, was removed from Italy on Tuesday on order of Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi over concerns about state security and “growing ideological fanaticism” displayed by Khan.
The removal order cited Khan expressing a fundamentalist vision of jihad, the exaltation of martyrs, and support for Hamas terrorists in the Israel conflict, according to Italian state news agency Ansa.
Broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana reported that in videos published between November 2023 and April 2024, Zulfiqar Khan lambasted Western powers such as the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy of supporting “impure zionists” by backing Israel in its conflict with Hamas terrorists.
In one video, the Bologna imam was seen calling for Allah to destroy the supposed oppressors of the Palestinians.
In another sermon, Khan is reported to have called homosexuality “a disease to be treated” and argued that all Muslims have the right to that every confront it “to avoid catastrophic consequences such as even the very extinction of the human race”.
Zulfiqar Khan originally entered Italy in 1995 and was a residence permit holder prior to the expulsion order by the interior ministry this week.
In June, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini denounced the Islamist preacher for “hate speech against the West and Jews” and called for his “immediate expulsion from our country.” Celebrating his removal from Italy this week, Salvini said: “We finally sent him home. That’s right!”
Salvini, the leader of the populist League party, which governs in coalition with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI), has long been one of the country’s chief advocates for clamping down on immigration.
For his efforts as Interior Minister to protect Italy’s borders from open borders NGOs serving as migrant taxi ships in the Mediterranean, Salvini is currently facing trial Palermo where prosecutors are seeking a six year prison sentence against the Deputy PM.
Khan’s attorney, Francesco Murru, claimed that the decision to expel his client from the country the represented a “return to a police state and the prosecution of crimes of opinion.”
The imam argued that he had merely “expressed personal opinions” about the Israeli conflict and that his comments about women or homosexuals were no more inflammatory than statements made by Catholics in the country.
