ROTARY – pages 58 – 10/2015

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The challenge of taking the opportunity for mutual enrichment.

In Italy, as in the rest of the Western world, there is a strong immigration from countries with a large Muslim majority, especially from Africa and the Middle East. There are several causes that push people to leave their country: wars, expulsion, political instability, demographic and economic imbalance, flight from unemployment towards economic survival and others. This phenomenon, in the face of which our unpreparedness and disorientation manifests itself, certainly causes discomfort at various levels. But, if managed in the most appropriate way, uniting all the voluntary forces, it also offers the opportunity for a confrontation between different religions and cultures that can lead to mutual enrichment. Knowing the other, his historical, sociological, cultural, religious reality is one of the fundamental aspects for the realization of a peaceful coexistence and for a good management of the phenomenon of immigration. However, it must also be considered that these refugees live in a condition of inferiority both on the socio-economic and on the communication level. In fact, they are still people who find themselves living in a country other than their own, where a language that is unknown to them is spoken. For this reason they tend to close themselves off in their own reality, creating small ghettos distinguished by origin, language, culture, tribe, religion or religious brotherhood.

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