An Islamic sermon in Italian was posted on Facebook, before it was due to be read at a local mosque. While the sermon condemns war as heinous, the theme of the sermon – the first of its kind proposed and composed by Hamza Piccardo – was to discuss the meaning of jihad, meaning both ‘holy war’ and ‘personal struggle.’ “The duty of struggle is extremely important in Islam. We clearly say, resistance but no aggression. War is a heinous thing, and each of us, intimately, rejects it. However, sometimes we must turn to it.” The sermon asks that Muslims invoke peace, but to also be are that they “must know how to prepare (themselves) to fight and resist injustices and oppression.”
Speaking about certain episodes in the life of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, Piccardo underlined that holy war should take place only in cases of persecution and should always embody the concept of ‘resistance or struggle’. Piccardo is an imam in the coastal city of Imperia in north-western Italy.
