IGNAZIO DE FRANCESCO, MUSLIMS IN PRISON: AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE IN DIALOGUE WITH ARAB/MUSLIM CULTURE

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ISLAMOCHRISTIANA 42 (2016) 165–181

IGNAZIO DE FRANCESCO*

MUSLIMS IN PRISON AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE IN DIALOGUE WITH ARAB/MUSLIM CULTURE

SUMMARY: The article describes an educational experience, unique of its kind, amongst the Muslim inmates of a large Italian prison. Its approach was multicultural, as it aimed to establish a dialogue with the inmates involved, starting from their religious, cultural and national traditions. The point of arrival was the production of a “Prisoners’ Constitution”, a charter of rights and duties that they proposed as a foundation for peaceful coexistence in a Western type of multi-ethnic and multicultural society. The problem of the religious radicalization of the inmates makes the project highly topical. Documented by a film and a book, it is aimed for major development in Europe.

Introduction: a pilot experience An original educational experience, continuing and developing the pioneering work of Pier Cesare Bori1, was held in the Dozza prison in Bologna, one of the largest in Italy and which has the highest percentage of Muslim inmates2. It started in 2009, in the form of individual conversations, and culminated in the three-year period 20132016, in two projects comprising in the school curriculum: “Travelling with Ibn Baṭṭūṭa” (2013-2014) and “Rights, duties and solidarity” (hereinafter RDS: 20142016). This was effectively something new, not only in Italy, in the panorama of educational activities offered to people in prison. In the wake of the experience

* The Author, member of Piccola Famiglia dell’Annunziata, an Italian monastic community, is licensed in Patrology (Augustinianum) and PhD in Islamology (Pisai). He published several works on Christian Syriac literature and Islamic ascetical writings. 1 A university lecturer in moral philosophy and a historian of religions, Pier Cesare Bori (19372012) worked as a volunteer for many years at the Dozza prison, guiding groups of inmates, in particular Muslims, in reading works on religion, philosophy and of wisdom, widely collected from Western and oriental sources. Cfr. P.C. Bori, Lampada a se stessi. Letture tra università e carcere, Marietti 1820, Genova-Milano 2012. 2 On 19th February 2015, out of 707 inmates, 364 were registered as foreigners, equalling 51%. According to the countries of origin, over one-third of the total can be estimated as Muslims.

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matured in the individual conversations, both projects started from the idea of having recourse, as far as possible, to the cultural, ethical and religious heritage of the students, in this case Muslims. The two programmes, carried out over 58 meetings, involved a total of about 180 inmates3, most of whom were originally from North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria), with the addition of some from countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. The promoters of the initiative were, in close collaboration with the prison director and staff, the Centre for Adult Education (CPIA) of Bologna and, for RDS, the office of the Regional Authority for the rights of prisoners in the region of Emilia Romagna. The meetings were led, on a stable basis, by two figures: the coordinator of the course, a scholar of Islam and author of this article, and a teacher (literature/social sciences). An Arabic language cultural mediator joined them for the second project4, in which many external teachers took part, present physically or in video-recordings: jurists, scholars of Islam, imams, trade unionists, members of parliament and representatives of women’s organizations in the Arab world. RDS was documented, for the first year of its implementation, by a book5 and by a film, which won many national and international awards, including in Arab countries6. After the experimentation in Bologna, it is to be developed at a European level, on the initiative of Diathesis7, which in close collaboration with the CPIA of Bologna has drawn up a three-year plan, accepted in the programmes of the Erasmus Plus8. In the following pages, we will illustrate the course developed at Dozza from its beginnings to the epilogue of RDS, in the hope that it can be useful not only as documentation for scholars of Islam, but also as an outline for other, more advanced teaching experiments9.

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Respectively about thirty for “Travelling with Ibn Baṭṭūṭa” and 150 for RDS. Yassin Lafram, from Morocco, coordinator of the Islamic centres in Bologna. 5 Diritti, doveri, solidarietà: un’esperienza di dialogo tra Costituzioni e culture al carcere “Dozza” di Bologna, ed. Regione Emilia Romagna, Bologna 2015. Available online. 6 «Dustur», directed by Marco Santarelli, produced by Zivago Media and Ottofilmaker in association with Luce Cinecittà. It has won awards at festivals in Turin, Milan and Pistoia; in France in Paris; in Belgium in Brussels; in Algeria at the festival of Mediterranean cinema in Annaba and it was screened in Tunisia during the Italian cinema days of MedFest. 7 A consulting, research and training company, based in Modena, which since 1995 has accompanied the development of public and private organizations that mainly operate in the field of social, health and educational services. See the website www.diathesis.it. 8 “Rights, Duties, Solidarity: European Constitutions and Muslim Immigration”. The European project involves schools in four countries: Italy, Germany, Spain and Romania. It has been conceived for inside and outside prison, as well as for training new educational skills in the field of multiculturalism. 9 It was in this sense that it was presented at the European Meeting of Prison Chaplains, entitled “Radicalization in Prison: a Pastoral View”, organized by the Permanent Mission of the Holy See at the Council of Europe, the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) and the International Commission of Catholic Prison Pastoral Care (ICCPPC), at the session of 31/5/2016 held at the Council of Europe, Strasbourg. 4

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Intercultural re-education versus radicalization The massive presence of Muslims in Italian prisons10 presents new problems for the project of “re-educating the convict”, indicated in the Italian Constitution as the supreme purpose the penalty ought to aim for. If its nature of retribution and affliction cannot be cancelled11, it is highly significant that the re-educational purpose is the only one “explicitly consecrated” in the Constitution, and that therefore, in an advanced State, it cannot be deemed “extraneous to the legitimization and the function of the penalty”12. The ultimate purpose of the penalty is therefore to “re-educate” or according to a terminology considered more appropriate today, “re-socialize.” The second term indicates more clearly, in restoring a correct relationship between the individual and the community, the “great good” to be aimed at. It is therefore not only about vocational training, or the psychic-therapeutic path of freedom from drug addiction, or even just accompaniment to returning to one’s own more direct relational context, such as the family, but of the far more complex mode of inclusion in a European type of society which is plural and pluralistic: an educational pathway to citizenship13. Regarding objectives such as these, which look far beyond the dynamic of the offence and indeed make the prison school a workshop useful for the transformations underway in the whole society14, the re-educational activity can obviously not be conceived only as

10 According to the official statistics of the Ministry of Justice (available online), on 31/10/2016 there were 54,912 presences. Foreigners number 18,758, equal to over 33%. In the absence of information of religious affiliation, on the basis of the nationality of origin, it can be estimated that between 36 and 45% of the foreigners are Muslims. The disproportion with the share of Muslims present in the free population (about 2.5%) is clear, a gap that is also recorded in other European countries, such as England and France: cfr. P. Di Motoli, “I musulmani in carcere: teorie, soggetti, pratiche”, in Studi sulla questione criminale, 8 (2013) 81. 11 The very nature of a sanction qualified a “punishment” demands it, as it also has a preventive action (dissuasive from committing the offence) in relation to the community and individuals. The provisions of the same article 27 obviously remain valid: “The punishments cannot consist of treatments that are contrary to the sense of humanity”. 12 The Constitutional Court expressed itself in this sense, with a ruling (no. 313 of 1990) considered a turning point with respect to previous case law, which had interpreted in a reductive way the constitutional requirement on this point. Cfr. I. Nicotra, “Il significato della pena. A un anno della sentenza Torregiani della Corte EDU”, in Rivista telematica giuridica dell’Associazione Italiana dei Costituzionalisti, 2014 (available online). 13 The problem of the participation in educational activities by “irregulars”, i.e. people without citizenship or residence permits, can be mentioned here. Everything they have done in prison, often with great commitment, up to being awarded important educational qualifications and receiving vocational training, paradoxically risks being cancelled once they are released. 14 It is sufficient to think, as already mentioned, that the presence of foreigners in prison, almost marginal in the 1980, has increased enormously: cfr. D. Bruno, “La questione degli stranieri ristretti, tra libertà, pene, servizi”, in Diritti, doveri, solidarietà, p. 105. Prison is therefore characterized by a level of ethnic-religious and cultural plurality which is far more advanced than in society as a whole: the “Bilancio demografico nazionale” [“National population record”] published by the ISTAT (National Statistics Institute) estimates that legally resident foreigners account for about 8% of the total population. Accord-

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pure transmission of notions. It is about redesigning a “map of values” capable of restoring orientation to a broken life. It is here that the multicultural approach comes into play: in the uphill journey of those who have fallen into crime, we cannot avoid appealing to the heritage of values and traditions in which the inmate was born and was formed15. This is clearly valid for every single ethnic, religious and cultural belonging, but it applies in a very particular way for those with an Arab/Muslim background, characterized by a strong ideological structure, capable of being communicated to people with little or no schooling. The “re-emergence” in prison of this complex heritage, in which faith and ethics interact forcefully in reshaping the identity of individuals, is usually linked with the principle, which is also constitutional, of the free exercise of religious faith16. Granting space to Islam behind bars is easily traced back (and reduced) to the exercise of the daily prayers, the authorization given to the inmates to meet for the Friday prayer under the guidance of an imam authorized to preach, to the practice of the ritual fast and to the respect for the dietary rules. It is from this point of view that the interventions in favour of applying constitutional freedoms are multiplied, just as the problem of the entrance of external personnel for the religious welfare of Muslims is raised17. This is, however, only one aspect of the problem. The real challenge is to make the Arab/Muslim heritage, understood in its widest meaning, an effective partner in the project of re-education, with regard to three, closely connected, fundamental objectives: rehabilitating the inmate to “good behaviour”; his willingness to positively interact with people of other faiths and ideas, first in prison and then outside; and defusing the dangers of religious radicalism18.

ing to the estimates by Pew Research, Muslims in Italy today represent about 2.5% of the total, but the estimate over 15 years is that of double the presences, amply exceeding the threshold of 3 million. 15 Multiculturalism as a project for social integration is a very debated topic, inside and outside prisons: see for instance I. Becci - O. Roy (ed.), Religious Diversity in European Prisons: Challenges and Implication for Reabilitation, Springer International Publishing, Cham 2015; T. Modood, Multiculturalism. A Civic Idea, Polity Press, Cambridge 2013; F. Avanzini, “Strategie di convivenza”, in A. Pacini (ed.), Le religioni e la sfida del pluralismo, Paoline Editoriale Libri, Milano 2009, pp. 107-124. 16 Italian Constitution, article 19. Cfr. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 18; European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, article 9. 17 Among the many interventions in this sense, it is worth mentioning, due to the original source, that of the chaplains of European prisons, who state in the final document of their meeting in Strasbourg (“Radicalization in Prison: a Pastoral View”): “Religious Freedom in prisons is inoperable without the assistance of respective religious representatives. This assistance is essential so that prisoners can exercise their religious rights. According to our experience, the respect of the right to religious freedom not only is compatible with the conditions of life in prisons, but it is also a decisive factor in combating violent extremism”. Cfr. similarly, at the level of society as a whole, Religioni, dialogo, integrazione. Vademecum del Dipartimento per le libertà civili e l’immigrazione del Ministero dell’Interno, Roma 2013, p. 8 (available online). 18 It is important to clarify that the world “radicalism” is not equivalent to “terrorism”. It is possible to be radical believers, of any religion whatsoever, without minimally envisioning the possibility of carrying out acts of violence in the name of religion. As far as the Muslim inmates in Italian prisons are con-

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The phenomenon of radicalization in prison has been known and studied for some time. Even though, obviously, not all Muslim inmates are concerned, in recent years the general attention has however been concentrated on them, under the pressure of terrorist attacks, whose perpetrators declared they were acting, in various capacities, under the “flag of Islam”. The study of the biographies of many terrorists “in the name of Allah” has highlighted the decisive role played by a period in prison, even though short and for offences of a modest entity, with regard to a radical recovery of their religious identity, progressively (but also very rapidly) oriented towards carrying out criminal acts against a whole community and the symbols of its culture. While research on the processes of radicalization has multiplied19, in our opinion, the reflection on the strategies of de-radicalization to follow with subjects at risk is still weak20. The capacity to identify and prevent the “dangerous radicals” is not enough on its own, just as the strategies of controlling this category of inmates, always hesitating between “concentration” and “dispersion”, are not enough21. De-radicalizing the radicalized is effectively the best solution: the dangers connected with the ideas nurtured by a person disappear when the ideas of that person change. The process of

cerned, it is also to be considered that according to the data in the possession of the Department of Prison Administration (DAP), quoted by M.C. Covelli, “Come combattere il reclutamento di terroristi nelle nostre carceri”, Limes 7 (2016) 173, in September 2015, 201 were “monitored” (accused of offences connected with international terrorism); 95 were “suspects” (suspected of following Jihadist ideologies), and 42 were “flagged” (placed under observation regardless of possessing particularly significant signs). It is therefore a minimal percentage of the Muslim population behind bars. 19 In the increasingly large bibliography, we restrict ourselves to mentioning: M. Quattromani, “La radicalizzazione del terrorismo islamico”, in Quaderni ISSP 9 (2012) 95-106; D. Weggemans et al. (ed.), “The Radicalisation and Preparatory Processes of Dutch Jihadist Foreign Fighters”, Perspectives on Terrorism 8 (2014) 100-111. A. Silke (ed.), Prison, Terrorism and Extremism: Critical Issues in Management, Radicalisation and Reform, Routledge, New York 2014; D.E. Pressman, Risk Assessment of Radicalization to Violence, International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, The Hague 2016; J. Klausen et al. (ed.), “Toward a Behavioral Model of “Homegrown” Radicalization Trajectories”, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 39 (2016) 67-83; D. Hellmuth, “Countering Jihadi Prison Radicalization in Germany and the U.S.”, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, John Hopkins Un., 2016 (available online). 20 Cfr. International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ed.), Prison and Terrorism: Radicalisation and De-Radicalisation in 15 Countries, ICRS, London 2010. On the importance of the educational and multicultural approach, “Guidelines for prison and probation services regarding radicalisation and violent extremism”, adopted at the meeting (no. 1249) of the Committee of EU Ministers on 2nd March 2016 is worth mentioning: “As much as possible, prison and probation services shall select and recruit staff with relevant linguistic abilities and cultural sensitivity. Intercultural and multifaith awareness training for staff shall form an integral part of education and training in order to promote understanding of and tolerance to diversity of beliefs and traditions … Educational activities are essential in the rehabilitation process of probationers or prisoners that may have adopted violent extremist views. Not only does it provide a structure to the daily routines during imprisonment, but it also provides the opportunity to develop new skills that can facilitate resettlement” (nos. 13 and 15). Available online. 21 Covelli seems to reflect this dilemma, “Come combattere il reclutamento di terroristi”, pp. 171173, where she reports the new type of investigative activities started in Italy in the prison circuit.

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de-radicalization is all the more incisive the more the change is generated in the same “cultural code” that has produced the danger. The path followed in the Dozza prison of Bologna since 2009 and completed with RDS, came about from these presuppositions and has been nurtured by the observations made in the field and from the dialogues with a few dozen Muslim inmates, men and women, approached individually or in small groups, over a period of about seven years22. The point of interest of this work of collecting information was above all the “return to religion”: how does it come about, what does it mean and what does it produce?23 The most significant results are summarized here. Returning to religion in prison: lights and shadows One of the basic concepts of the theological structure of Muslim law is that the human judge can act only within the limits of what appears and with the support of the evidence admitted in court. What does “not appear” remains reserved to the court of God, who will make every decision on the Last Day. This applies in the first place to the area of the intentions, those “thoughts of the heart” that God alone knows, but with the singular extension of the principle, the space of the infractions currently committed but which have remained secret, is attributed to the inscrutable dominion of God. The idea, which can be found extensively in the classic juridical and ethical sources, is that the crime has remained unpunished because God laid his veil over it and it will be lifted on the Day of Judgement24. What has been stated here helps us understand a delicate point in the religious psychology of the Muslim inmate: arrest, trial, conviction

22 A passage of these private conversations, reconstructed literally for a wider audience, is offered in I. De Francesco, Leila della tempesta. Un’avventura di dialogo tra le culture, Zikkaron, Reggio Emilia 2016. 23 A classification of the types of return to the religious by Muslim inmates is that produced by M.Kh. Rhazzali, “I musulmani e i loro cappellani. Soggettività, organizzazione della preghiera e assistenza religiosa nelle carceri italiane”, in A. Angelucci et al. (ed.), Islam e integrazione in Italia, Marsilio, Venezia 2014, pp. 121-126, which distinguishes five degrees: the re-converted; the multazim (engaged); the mutashaddid (intransigent); the suspended (interested in religion but not engaged); the mu’min (the accent is on the interior/spiritual aspects). This is obviously an open classification, in the sense that it always allows the passage (including sudden) from one degree to another. 24 Cfr. for example the famous ḥadīṯ reported by Wakī‘ b. al-Ǧarrāḥ in his Kitāb al-zuhd, about infractions which have remained “behind the veil”: “If God has covered you, stay covered”. The quotation of another ḥadīṯ by al-Šāfi‘ī, an authority of reference of one of the four major schools of law, in his Kitāb al-Umm goes in the same direction: “People, the time has come to abstain from what God the almighty prohibits. Those who commit any of these foul things must cover themselves with the veil of God, as we will inflict on those who show anything off what the book of God orders in their regard”. He thus states, regarding the “capital crimes” of Islam, “On our side we declare it preferable that those who have committed a crime subject to ḥadd remain concealed, fear God and do not return to sin as God welcomes the repentance of his servants”. For the precise reference to these sources, cfr. I. De Francesco, Il lato segreto delle azioni, PISAI, Roma 2014, pp. 161 and 319-320.

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and imprisonment are events of this world which raise the veil in advance over the sin committed and project the life of those who experience it on to the horizon of the Other World. An international drugs trafficker told us that when he was arrested he had a vision of the Throne of the Almighty and he saw himself being dragged by the angels to a Court where even the limbs of his body received mouths to testify against him25. Another inmate, imprisoned for robbery, told us of the same vision, but which he had in very particular circumstances: one night, an earthquake was felt in the area where his prison was and the prison staff on duty, in order to guarantee the prisoners’ safety, opened the doors of all the cells and the inmates assembled in the internal football pitch, in the open. The frightening scene of that forced nocturnal gathering brought to the surface in him the image, typical of Islamic eschatological preaching, of the “general assembly” of the Day of Judgement, which nobody can escape. Both inmates felt the need to respond to the event with a “radical” change of ideas and habits, which ended up by attracting the attention of the prison staff. Not all the trajectories of a return to the religious have such a dramatic origin, but the new perception of one’s “state of sin” always plays a very important role in prison, even appearing capable of producing very rapid conversions, precisely the ones that are most exposed to the risks of radicalization, due to the burden of the emotive factor and the urgency to do something immediately. Completing the picture, another principle has to be reported, which also comes from the heart of Islamic traditions, in a certain sense opposed to the first but equally present in the religious psychology of the inmate: the domination of fate, i.e. the “decree of God”, which includes everything. Although it is prohibited by God, falling into crime is easily understood in the light of this mysterious Decree, which is a pillar of the Islamic “credo”. The idea obviously has a positive side, because it helps withstand the suffering in prison with resignation and without falling into those states of despair which can even lead to suicide, and believing that God always leaves the door open for repentance. On the negative side, it can induce attitudes of quietism and indifference, loss of a sense of personal responsibility, thoughts and feelings that easily prepare the reiteration of the offences after release. The first step in the rediscovery of one’s religion behind bars is normally the return to the cultic practices of prayer and fasting. The daily, weekly and annual rites mark the entrance into a new way of marking time, which also helps to give an orientation to the soul and stabilize the flow of thoughts. Ritual practice can have very positive effects on that “moral rebirth” which has a decisive importance in the reconstruction of an honest life; on the other hand, the excessive polarization of interest in the cultic ritualism risks being a factor of increasing inflexibility of the personality. When attention to the precision of the rite (required in all manuals of law) becomes

25

This idea has a precise base in the Qur’an: cfr. sura Yā-Sīn (36),65 and Fuṣṣilat (41),21. The terrifying image has been widely picked up and developed in the collections of ḥadīṯ and in the ethical literature of Islam.

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obsessive, it can contribute to an overall regression in the relationship with the surrounding reality, increasingly perceived as a chaotic and intrinsically impure dimension, in which a space of order and holiness, prayer, has been carved out. Worked out behind bars, this new way of being and seeing the world will then be taken outside. When we talk about the problems connected with the (constitutionally guaranteed) right to exercise religious freedom in prison, the problem reported here normally remains in the shadows, whilst the centre of attention is occupied by preaching, especially when it is the inmates themselves who perform this role, both at times authorized by the prisons’ directors and outside these times, consequently in a totally uncontrollable way. Similarly, the problem of the content of the litany of invocations added to the ritual prayers, or independent of them, remains ignored. These are devotional practices which are very difficult to keep under observation, to realize in time, for example, that those who are proposing them to a small group of worshippers, meeting in a space of socialization or in the “open-air yards” are mixing blessings and curses, to which the present respond with an increasingly faster sequence of “amens”, thus agreeing with and confirming what they have heard. The automatism of the response to this type of litany of invocation must not underestimate the influence that they can exercise on consciences: the history of religions shows how powerful a message of hatred attached directly to the formulas of prayer can be26. It is clear that no type of external control can ever equal the dissuasive action exercised by Muslim inmates who intend to use the right to exercise their religion honestly, defending it from all pollution and subterfuge. The recovery of a strong religious identity in prison can therefore induce keeping the surrounding world at a distance. If that only meant the definitive breakaway from the world of crime, it would only be something to celebrate. The problem arises, as already mentioned, when the action of keeping a distance is dilated and ideologised, affecting the relationship with the whole community, in its social and cultural physiognomy. It is worth recalling here, in this regard, two features of the religious psychology of the inmates observed: the strong sense of inefficacy of human justice and the transformation of the culprit into the victim. A Moroccan inmate told us, with a great sense of anguish, that he believed that only the application of the punishments established by God would have the power to purify him religiously from what he had

26 It is the echo of a historical practice, already known in Judaism and Christianity: regarding Judaism, we can think of the formula against heretics, included in the synagogue recitation of the “Eighteen blessings”; on the opposing front, a particularly impressive example is offered by the hymns on Easter by Ephrem the Syrian (4th century). These compositions have left a weighty trace, from this point of view, in the liturgical books of the Syrian tradition until the present day. With regard to Latin Christianity, in medieval times, there were actual books of cursing: cfr. C.K. Little, Benedectine Maledictions. Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France, Cornell University Press, Ithaca-London 1993. In the Islamic sphere, the historical fracture between Sunni and Shi’ites is reflected in the use of curses introduced in the reciprocal invocations: cfr. K. Lewinstein, “Cursing”, in J.W. Meri (ed.), Medieval Islamic Civilization: an Encyclopaedia, Routledge, New York 2006, vol. I, p. 185.

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done27, whereas the punishment inflicted on him in the name of the Italian people, on the basis of laws written by men like him, therefore unstable and changeable, appears totally useless for this purpose: tomorrow they could allow acts that today they punish. “Only the law of God does not change” and “Living for God alone” thus become the key words of his “new existence” and, at least in the intention, the points of his programme of action, once released. It could be said to be a programme of holiness, but in which there is a frontal opposition to the “city of men” which cannot be underestimated, thinking of the possible type of evolution. The feeling of guilt, which has no remedy outside the “path of God” is in parallel, paradoxically, with the perception of being the victim of great injustice. The difficult conditions of life in prison, the overcrowding, the lack of possibilities of work etc. – everything seems to make him believe that what he is undergoing is far greater than a just punishment for the violations he committed28. One last observation: the study of the social contexts of ‘violent radicalization’ has often brought to light the importance of the environments linked to the world of drugs. The drug trade is effectively, from the point of view of the religious psychology of the inmate, a very particular offence, as it is committed with the full consent and indeed the pressing request of the consumer. The line of demarcation between culprit and victim, which elsewhere is very clear, is thus annulled. Unlike offences such as theft, robbery, extortion, rape, personal injury and murder, in the drug trade the seller and the consumer are fully accomplices. The threshold of perception of the crime committed can thus be lowered to the point of a complete reversal of roles: the real culprit, ethically speaking, is the consumer, an impure and blasphemous person, who has dragged the vendor into his sin, to prison, where the latter is the only one who pays. On a certain path of recovering his religious values, the drug addict can become the symbol of the perversion of a whole world: that of the infidels. One step even further forward on this line is the one that leads to positively reconsidering the drug trade, making it an act of ǧihād against the kuffār. Of the many accounts collected in this regard, there is that of a Tunisian inmate, who told us that he had been induced into the drug trade by a pseudo-imam, shortly after his arrival in Italy, precisely with this motivation29. Another inmate, also Tunisian, told of a fatwā (a legal answer issued by

27 The opinion, very widespread at popular level, as can be seen in the contact with the inmates, is supported by the doctrine on the meaning of the Shariatic punishment in Islam, condensed for example in one of the major current manuals of Muslim law, cfr. W. al-Zuhaylī, al-Fiqh al-islāmī wa-adillatu-hu, Dar al-fikr, Damascus 1405/1985, vol. IV, p. 285. There are, however, those who doubt the fact that in Islam, the punishment has a real expiatory value of the crime/sin: cfr. D. Scolart, L’islam, il reato, la pena, dal fiqh alla codificazione del diritto penale, Istituto per l’Oriente C.A. Nallino, Roma 2013, p. 31. 28 Enlightening, in this sense, is the account given by a former international drug trafficker, Abd alSamad Bannaq, and published in “Diritti, doveri, solidarietà”, p. 101. Cfr. also Covelli, “Come combattere il reclutamento di terroristi”, p. 171: “The perception of discriminatory acts and acts of negating rights by the institutions is very dangerous”. 29 A “textbook case” has been defined, from investigative sources reported by the news media, Abdelkader Fezzani, a Tunisian and object of an international warrant for crimes connected with terrorism:

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the faqīh, an expert on religious law) which circulates amongst many pushers, according to which the payment in alms of a large portion of the income obtained, religiously purifies the remainder. Another inmate told us that he had contributed very generously to founding a prayer hall. If it is clear that no authentic scholar would hesitate to react against the perversion of the fundamental principles of Islamic ethics and the šarī‘a, it is clear that, from the few examples quoted, the defusing of the explosive potential of ideas such as these must take place in the ideological system from which they have germinated, even in a deviated way30. The first step: on a journey in search of values A first educational intervention for this segment of inmates gave rise, in the 20132014 school year, to a course based on two fundamental ideas: on the one hand, the rediscovery of the ethical sources of Islam, on the other, the experience of travelling in different civilizations and cultures. Bearing in mind what has been described above, it is easy to understand how the two perspectives are closely interdependent: recovering a treasure of ethical values in the best Islamic traditions can really cooperate with the moral rebirth of an inmate, on condition, however, that the broadening of perspectives on “worlds different” from his own is associated, which hold similar or different treasures. Authors from the golden age of Arab literature, such as ‘Abd Allāh b. alMubārak, Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, al-Ḥariṯ al-Muḥāsibī, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ġazālī, to mention only a few, therefore offered, on the one hand, invaluable teachings in the area of wisdom and ascetics, as well as in that of exhorting the practice of good virtues. The Arabic of these texts is very pure and on its own exercised a strong attraction for their contents, whereas the exercise of translation into Italian stimulated focusing on the contents and opened up, completely naturally, spaces for dialogue between the inmates present and the teachers. Secondly, on a path in parallel with the first one, the travel journal of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa was offered as a very useful tool, with respect to the objectives proposed: on 14th June 1325 a young man of twenty-one, a Moroccan Berber, left Tangiers with the intention of taking part in the sacred ḥaǧǧ to Mecca; what was to be a pious pilgrimage, within the well-defined canons of his religion, became a neverending adventure, from the coasts of the Atlantic to the endless stretches of India and China, discovering unknown worlds. Ibn Baṭṭūṭa left a Muslim and returned a Muslim: this is not what is under discussion. The point is that his perception of reality could no

he came to Italy when he was only twenty, in the early 1990s he worked first as a farmhand, then moved into the drug trade and it was in this context of micro-criminality that his transformation into a “pious and religious” man, as he defined himself to the judges, took place. This “metamorphosis” led him, according to the charges against him, to preaching and recruiting for the ğihād. 30 Leverage can be made, for example, on the principle that “māl ḥarām” (illegal income) cannot be used in any ḥalāl activity, from trade to the purchase of property, to maintaining one’s family. The Shariatic protection of the mental faculties can be used to prove the illegal character of the production and trade of drugs.

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longer be that of before, as he was plunged into the ocean of widely different peoples, languages, traditions and customs. In the course of twenty meetings we read with the inmates an anthology of extracts, first in Arabic and then in the Italian translation31; we followed the journey on maps, we consulted encyclopaedias, we screened videos on the countries crossed, we returned to the story to criticize it or defend it and even reinvent it. We looked at unknown scenes through the eyes and the memories of that young man from Tangiers, one like them not only because an Arab and a Muslim, but also because lacking in any preparation, except his youthful bravery and desire to know the unknown. The Arabic source, a great classic of travel literature, therefore provided the canvas for a dialogue where the historical/geographical perspective and the ethical dimension of living together were continuously recalled. The reference to the flow of historical eras, from the most remote32, helps to give insight how human experience is developed through a chain of links which are distinct but also inseparable at one and the same time. The destination of this journey through “values and colours” was obviously the present day, to start reflecting on the possibility and the ways of peaceful and reciprocally enriching coexistence, between the peoples who are today reshaping in depth the face of European societies. This type of passage to the present, already prepared by the participation in some meetings by an imam33, required however the involvement of a new figure: the Constitution, or rather Constitutions. When men give themselves a law “Speaking about the Constitution is a fine exercise in dialogue, because the Constitution is a shared need – even before an experience. At all latitudes and at all times, people tackle the problem of political power, of how to organize it, of how to extend it or limit it. Identifying the common need and speaking of the different experiences helps us understand the universality of the topics of constitutionalism and the uniqueness of the individual constitutions. By comparing the experiences, we also have a better understanding of the basic need that motivates the great interest in the topics of constitutionalism. The provisions on legislative power enlighten us on how it was decided to decide on questions that concern the community. Those on rights, on the other hand, clarify why it was considered important to have to protect these rights from the impetus of the decisions of the majorities but also of the possible limits that can be

31

We consider the cultural mediation operating in the simple work of translation one of the fundamental methodological keys of our experimentation. The fact that translations in Western languages are already available (in the case of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, the Italian translation by Claudia Tresso published by Einaudi, Turin 2006) can reduce this effort but without replacing it. 32 For example, the fact that the descriptions of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa travelling through Egypt and encountering the ruins of the Pharaohs aroused enormous interest cannot come as a surprise. 33 The Egyptian Abu Abd al-Rahman, in charge of the cultural activities in Italy of the “Lega degli Imam” [“League of Imams”].

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placed on these rights”34. Gianluca Parolin makes the best possible summary of the development of the project in the two school years, 2014-2016, immediately after the year spent in the company of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa: a comparative reading of four Constitutions, the Italian one of 1948, and the three produced on the southern shores of the Mediterranean in the period of the “Arab Spring”, i.e. the Moroccan Constitution of 2011 and the Tunisian and Egyptian Constitutions of 2014. The phrase “Arab Spring”, coined to refer to the popular movements that developed in various countries between the end of 2010 and the beginning of the following year, was subjected to intense criticism, reaching the point of negating its historical truth: not a spring but rather an early autumn or even the passage from one winter to another, even harsher one, under the guidance of players who are more or less concealed, but who have been able to manipulate the feelings of the public from the very beginning. At the level of the experience of those who participated, the fact that it represented a moment for the emergence of some fundamental requests, such as freedom of expression and association, the right to work, the protection of the most discriminated social groups (including women), the fight against corruption, the end of the obsessive control on public and private life by the security forces, remained without a doubt. These are demands for justice and equity that are well reflected in a fundamental charter such as the Italian Constitution, which was drawn up after the departure of a dictatorship which had been equally as harsh and which had precipitated the country into a bloody war. The ‘text book’ of this new educational experience was produced by summarizing the four Constitutions on eleven key topics: equality and solidarity; right of association and expression of thought; right to scientific research and artistic expression; religious freedom; right to health; the condition of women; family; work; protection of the weakest; personal freedom; fair trial and punishment; right of asylum. A total of 141 articles, reproduced in the original language and in a translation: Arabic for the Italian; English or French for the Arabic. As can be seen, the course touched above all on the themes of the fundamental rights, but without completely ignoring the subject of the organization and balance of the powers of the state, a decisive node in the passage from dictatorship to democracy. There was also obviously a presentation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 194835 and, on the Muslim side, of the “Muslims of Europe Charter of Values”36, whilst only a mention was made of historical sources such as the “Medina Charter”, which has recently been brought back to the centre of 34 G.P. Parolin, “Lo spazio del costituzionalismo nell’islam”, in Diritti, doveri, solidarietà, cit., p. 117 (transl. from Italian). Previously Adjunct Professor at the American University Cairo, Department of Law, and now Associate Professor at London Aga Khan University, Parolin participated at RDS with a lesson on Arab new Constitutions. 35 With the addition, concerning in particular the topic of the condition of women, of some articles of CEDAW, the 1979 UN convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. 36 Document created on the initiative of the Federation of Islamic Organizations of Europe (FIOE), approved and signed on 10th January 2008 by more than 400 Islamic organizations in 28 countries. It includes statements worthy of interest on the desire of Muslims to integrate in the societies of arrival, on the respect of democratic rules, on male-female equality and on the proposal of a moderate Islam.

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attention37, and the Islamic Charters of human rights, such as that adopted in 1990 by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and that adopted in 1994 by the Arab League38. Alongside these written sources there was also the contribution by external teachers39, as well as that from the Internet in Arabic: films, documentaries, TV debates and street interviews. The variety of materials, which revolved around the fundamental nucleus of constitutional texts, had the precise aim of presenting as wide a range of positions as possible, not only to stimulate the participants but also to give tangible evidence that the experience of dialogue proposed was real, and therefore did not avoid discussion even on the most delicate points40. The critical point: law of God and/or law of men? If the new Arab Constitutions and in particular the Tunisian one41, represent a useful stimulus for dialogue around the Italian Constitution, we cannot ignore how

37 The “Declaration of Marrakesh” by 250 religious leaders, who met in early 2016 under the patronage of the King of Morocco, is a document worthy of interest for the attempt to entrench in the Islam of the origins the idea of an inter-ethnic and inter-religious community. Included by Ibn Isḥāq in the materials of his Sīra al-nabawiyya, the Medina Charter appears as placed under the direct authority of the Prophet, even though its dating and authenticity, as well as the possibility of assimilating it with a “Constitution” (even the first one, cfr. M.H. Kamali, The First Written Constitution of the World, Lahore 1968) is today the object of discussion: cfr. A. Emon, “Reflections on the Constitution of Medina”, in UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law 103 (2001-2002) 103-133. 38 Using these documents is necessary, but requires adequate time and specific preparation. The reason is simple: the traditional Islamic approach, which is reflected in these documents (especially in the first one) does not allow speaking of “natural” rights recognized to a person as a human being, as “right” is, properly speaking, only what God attributes to its creature to give it the chance to carry out what he orders: cfr. H. Redissi, “L’universalità alla prova delle culture: le dichiarazioni islamiche dei diritti dell’uomo”, in Id., Islam e modernità, Ombre corte, Verona 2014, pp. 68-71; Kh. Abou El Fadl, “The Centrality of Shari‘ah to Government and Constitutionalism in Islam”, in R. Grote et al. (ed.) Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries. Between Upheaval and Continuity, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, pp. 50-54. 39 Sixteen in all, including three video-recorded interventions: from Istanbul Shirin Daqouri, a Syrian researcher; from Tunis Iman b. Muhammad, member of the Tunisian Constituent and of the new Parliament; from Rabat, Asma al-Amrani, trade unionist. 40 Of the large amount of video material used, we restrict ourselves to mentioning here, as an example, “Fī al-‘umq”, the famous programme broadcast by al-Jazeera presented by the journalist ‘Alī alZāfirī, which often includes the topics of citizenship, democracy and its relationship with the šarī‘a, etc. 41 The new text of 149 articles is characterized, as V.M. Donini and D. Scolart write in La sharì‘a e il mondo contemporaneo, Carocci, Roma 2015, p. 36, “by a certain openness to the most crucial themes, such as the role of the sharì‘a and the relationship with positive law, freedom of expression and its compatibility with the respect of religious morals, as well as women’s rights”. Articles such as no. 6, on the freedom of belief and conscience, and no. 20, on the equality between men and women, are “unique in the Arab world” (ibid. p. 37). The award of the Nobel peace Prize to the “Tunisian Spring” is evidence of the successful result of the mediation between different forces and orientations, which prevents the country sliding into another civil war. Cfr. also D. Pickard, “Implementing Tunisia’s New Constitution”, in IEMed. Mediterranean Yearbook, 2014, pp. 137-138.

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they are, at the same time, the reflection of the great challenge of the Arab/Muslim peoples in relation to themselves and the world around them, a point of tension between the “religious vocation” of a community of believers and the secular requirements of a plural society. The programme of the course dwelt on this very delicate point on several occasions, without ever trying to hide or reduce the criticalities: “Do we have to believe in the Constitution rather than the Qur’an?” The question of a Tunisian inmate, one of those which does not seem to leave a “way out” for the interlocutor, corresponds to the attitude of an Algerian fellow-prisoner, who even refused to hold the Constitution of his country in his hands: “The Qur’an is my Constitution”. A second objection is directed at the UN Declaration of Human Rights: “A picklock to force our communities, starting from the family”. To give greater emphasis to positions like these, which have a clear capacity of fuelling the processes of radicalization, there is also recourse to screenings of extracts from Arab television programmes, constructed on the apparently irreducible opposition between Law of God and laws of men, between democracy and šarī‘a. The response of the educators to challenges of this extent was twofold: to historicize and to problematize. A path that takes history into even minimal account can help the students leave easy and dangerous idealizations, starting from a simple question: if God is the only legislator, how can the institutions of a community without one of the fundamental prerogatives of power, that of producing law, function? It can be shown, by documents, that over the course of history Muslim societies gave themselves instruments to produce “rules from below”, to place alongside the “rules from above” contained in the šarī‘a. Islamic law, from its first appearance, has always had, without abandoning its assertion of absolute validity, to measure up to the need to have rules emanated, for most of them, by governors or as the result of habits. The area of application of this “law from below” (called qanūn to distinguish it terminologically from the šarī‘a) has been increasingly extended, even occupying subjects traditionally reserved to šarī‘a, until those processes of modernization and codification which, from the 19th century, sanction in a certain way the subordination of the latter to the former. It is in this picture that we can read the path of constitutionalism in the Arab/Muslim world and understand, at the same time, the educational usefulness of having recourse to some fundamental Arab Charters to fuel the interest of Muslim students in the Italian Constitution. Without ever eluding the criticalities, obviously, indeed, making them explicit: Constitutionalism which speaks Arabic may perhaps have remote roots but it has been shaped in dialogue with the modern and contemporary West. It is a dialogue studded by openings and closings, where the history of colonialism has powerfully influenced the processes of re-Islamization. In spite of this, Rainer Grote and Tilman Röder note that, out of the 46 countries where the Muslims form the majority of the population, only ten define themselves as “Islamic states” in their Constitutions; of these only two (Iran and Pakistan) and followed by Saudi Arabia have openly embraced the concept of divine sovereignty in place of the principle of national or popular sovereignty, whereas the majority have opted for a more moderate version of “Muslim constitutionalism” up to cases such as Senegal and Indonesia, where the do-

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mestic democratic debate has led to excluding, for the time being, the Islamization of the whole political and legal system42. Even in those countries which have formally made Islam the guiding principle in the construction of their national Charters, the ways of implementation vary considerably. Specialists on the subject tend to say that there is no uniform concept of the Islamic state, but multiple and different versions of it. This plurality of positions has considerable importance and has to be adequately highlighted on an educational path such as the one described here43. The principle of plurality, together with a presentation aiming to highlight the historical development and geographical differences, also came into play in the reflection on the very nature of religious Law. Leaving aside the point of its “revealed” origin, which belongs to the pure context of faith, it can however be shown, again with recourse to the sources, that it does not appear formally as a “code”, therefore an inflexible text stabilizing once and for all the rules that regulate the life of believers, but as an enormous set of texts, collected at different periods and in different areas and subject to the interpretation of jurists, on the basis of orientations which could be very different. Three points of the structure of the šarī‘a were also highlighted, due to their importance with respect to the type of users of the course: first of all its significant ethical dimension, which is translated into a classification of values of all human acts and encourages living in the community of human beings with “justice” and “piety”, without ever being able to disconnect the latter from the former; secondarily, the strong accent on the principle of personal responsibility, which represents a vigorous appeal to the conscience of each individual, including beyond what the judge has understood and established about him; lastly the defence of the five macro-objectives (life, religion, mental faculties, descendants, property) as its ethical heart. The third and fifth macroobjective of the šarī‘a are particularly significant for a population of inmates who are mostly serving sentences for drug trafficking and crimes against property. The Prisoners’ Constitution The project come to a conclusion with a “writing workshop”. It may seem a paradox to ask those who violated laws to write them, but in fact it is precisely those who have broken away from legality who can have a particularly vivid perception of what it is good and right to do. This has already been seen when we mentioned the paths of religious radicalization, which always include a longing for a “higher justice”. This longing must not be avoided but given adequate space for expression, orienting it, at

42

Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries, cit., pp. 10-11. In the increasingly larger bibliography on these topics, we restrict ourselves to mentioning, in addition to the collection of essays edited by R. Grote and T.J. Röder, Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: P. Longo, “Islamic Constitutionalism and Constitutional Politics in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia”, UNILU Center for Comparative Constitutional Law and Religion Working Paper Series WP 3 (2013, available online), in particular pp. 4-18; N.J. Brown-M. Revkin, “Islamic Law and Constitutions”, in A.M. Emon-R. Ahmed (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law (2015, available online). 43

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the same time, towards a relational dimension between those who are “different”: the writing workshop obviously cannot claim to produce a Constitution in the proper sense of the term but undoubtedly represents a real effort of “high” thinking and, above all, imagining fair rules that are valid for all. The students participating in the second year of RDS continued what their companions had produced at the end of the previous year: many of them were no longer there because they had been released or transferred to other prisons. This is a detail which is not of secondary importance: the participants in the workshop “inherited” some material that had already been produced but also enjoyed, at the same time, the freedom to confirm it, modify it and develop it. It was, in other words, a tangible experience of the dynamic relationship between law, ethics and history: history does not stop, nor do the lives of people, who continuously have to adapt the “rules of navigation” to the new circumstances of their journey. Loyalty to what is received but also development of what has been deposited well. In proceeding with the work on writing, we tried as far as possible to reproduce the mechanisms of a real parliamentary procedure: the students first of all met in an assembly, dialoguing very freely, with the participation of their teachers, then they continued in small groups, where they drafted the texts to take to the plenary discussion. Here, speakers were appointed to present the work done, which was discussed, with the possibility of introducing amendments. Lastly, the texts were each put to the vote. Some of them are characterized by the objective and prescriptive style typical of the provisions of law, whilst others resemble more recommendations of an ethical nature. This singular intersection of different “literary genres” is to be understood not only as a clear sign of the non-specialization of the authors but also in the light of their religious and cultural background, where law and ethics often proceed together, and the classic legal expert is also often a catechist and preacher. The final text, about nine thousand characters long and divided into 12 paragraphs, opens with a “preamble” which we reproduce here, to give direct space to the voice of these inmates. The text is the result of three contributions merged together, compiled by the authors in Arabic and, also, in part in Italian. Here is the unabridged translation in English: In order to create a good society, its individuals have to be in close relations, consult one another and act according to what they have agreed on. There must be no discrimination between people, whatever the reason; social position, wealth, fame or religion. In order for society to be successful and develop culturally and morally and be a cohesive society, it is necessary to proceed in agreement with the opinion of the majority. In order for society to be successful, it is also necessary to be close to the class of the weakest and poorest, dialoguing with them and taking their needs and problems into particular consideration. There has to be respect for all creatures on earth and in the sky. The possibility also has to be given to the things that for us are not trivial. And we must not forget our children and mothers and sisters and brothers in Africa and in the countries ravaged by war. We are thinking of them then we are making democracy and laws. And always forgive evil. Freedom means many things for us: respect, work, collaboration inside and outside. In life we learn but we do not understand but in the end we realize the error we are making. It is pointless lying to ourselves: it is pointless living as a delinquent. Make sure you do not fall into it.

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Conclusion: the traces of a result There cannot be real integration without entering into a profound dialogue with the original culture of the “new citizens”. This presupposition applies, all the more so, for the resocialization of those who have broken the law: seriously taking into consideration the most profound components of their religious and cultural identity can be a decisive factor in a path out of crime, and at the same time a way to avoid them developing in the sense of a radical and hostile fracture, with the fabric of a plural and pluralist society. This, in synthesis, is what we tried to do at the Dozza prison in Bologna. We worked with the inmates on broadening their horizons, with an inclusive point of view, aiming to give the Arab/Muslim civilization its leading role, but not the only one. To express it using the language of photography, it was about stimulating the passage from the zoom to the wide-angle, from the image in black and white to the one in full colour. The history going back over a thousand years of an institution such as prison shows that it is a prison for the mind and body but, inseparably, a place where ideas can be worked out. Being inserted in this subterranean flow, often confused and magmatic, is an act of decisive strategic importance, even when it does not seem possible to measure the results obtained exactly. Often they are only “traces of a result” such as the one that a Tunisian inmate records in his personal diary, given to the author when he was transferred to another prison, as the souvenir of a friendship created over the three intense years of wide-ranging reading and discussions: “At school we also studied the Constitutions, including the Italian Constitution, the Tunisian, the Moroccan and the Egyptian ones, using the Book and the Sunna as well. We studied human rights. I translated everything, the texts and the individual articles, and I realized that many states transgress and violate divine law, which means equality and equity between all people”44.

RÉSUMÉ Cet article décrit une expérience d’éducation, unique en son genre, parmi des musulmans incarcérés dans une grande prison italienne. Il s’agit d’une approche multiculturelle qui vise à établir un dialogue avec ces prisonniers à partir de leurs traditions religieuse, culturelle et nationale. Le but final est de produire une ‘Constitution des prisonniers’, une charte des droits et des devoirs qu’ils proposent comme fondement d’une coexistence pacifique dans une société occidentale multiethnique et multiculturelle. Le problème de la radicalisation religieuse des prisonniers rend le projet éminemment d’actualité. Documenté par un film et un livre, ce projet est appelé à un plus grand développement en Europe.

44 The original is in Arabic, as are almost all the texts in the diary of the writer, who is serving a long sentence in Italy, whilst another and even longer sentence, awaits him in his home country. It is worth emphasising that in this type of project, the level of interpersonal contact is of great importance. The starting point is from individuals to return to individuals, and the personal bonds of friendship and esteem that are made with people are the best vehicle for the passage of ideas.

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