European Islam and the Italian case. Tendencies and specificities

Abstract In the second half of XXth century, the processes of secularization, privatization, and pluralization of the religious offer, have completely changed the European religious landscape. These processes have accelerated enormously with the arrival and progressive stabilization of ever larger waves of immigrants. The presence of Muslim immigrants (statistically, culturally, and geopolitically, the most significant and the most debated of these new religious presences) brought Islam to Europe: and this has been the beginning of a modern European Islam. The processes of integration are nevertheless different in every European country. The case of Italy has its own peculiarities: because the Islamic presence is more recent, and because it follows different paths. The article will describe these specificities.