This text on a certain Abdul Hadi Palazzi is taken from a website ( http://www.ifrance.com/amipalazzi) which shows how the Muslim community is being manipulated by some quite surprising characters, for political reasons which have nothing to do with the faith I and no doubt some other people in this forum were born in.

I can say nothing as to the reliability of the information provided here, but there are a lot of footnotes and links, and it certainly appears to be extremely well documented: very little comments or rants. Unfortunately I don't know Italian, which most of the site is in.

I am putting this article up in several instalments, as it is quite long - bear with me and skip if you find it boring.


Abdul Rahman T.

...................




The Unlikely Muslim

 http://www.ifrance.com/amipalazzi/indexgb.htm

the Adventurous Career of
"Maulana Shaykh Abdul Hadi" Massimo Palazzi
Massimo Palazzi

THE STRANGE STORY OF ABDUL HADI PALAZZI
"Abdul Hadi" Massimo Palazzi, secretary general of the "Association of Italian Muslims" (AMI) and of the "Cultural Institute of the Islamic Community" (ICCII), is an Italian who has managed to build himself a world-wide reputation as a model "good" or "moderate" Muslim; he is often presented in the media as a "University Professor" and even as the leader of all Italian Muslims.

This site offers a thoroughly documented analysis of the incredible career of this former Mormon, former right-wing neo-Pagan, former member of Berg's "Children of God" and former Rajneesh devotee, who boasts of being a "Knight of Grand Cross with Silver Plate" of the self-styled "dynastic" order of the Mussolini family, as well as the "Grand Chancellor and
Preceptor for the Italian Language of the Supreme Solomonic Order of the Princes of Shekal." Palazzi also claims several other titles, including that of "Professor in the Department of the History of Religion at the University of Velletri in Rome, Italy." There is no university in Velletri...

In the press, the "Association of Italian Muslims" boasts 3.000 or 6.000 members, but those who know the organization say members are around a dozen. The current president is a well known New Age guru, known for claiming to be the first person in the world to have discovered how the human mind really works; the vice-presidents include two self-proclaimed agents of the "K Office" of the Italian military secret service, who recently made the news because of their involvement in a complicated scam where the savings of thousands of Italians mysteriously disappeared.

The other members of Palazzi's group are mainly a small group of Somalis, former members of the regime of the bloodthirsty dictator Siad Barre.

Palazzi is mostly known in Italy for his violent rhetoric and his excommunicatory language. A few years ago, his fury was directed against critics of Wahhabism and against Israel: a small magazine he published became rather famous when it published a couple of Holocaust-denying articles. At the time, Palazzi boasted an appointment as a teacher by the Saudi

preacher Bin Baz, worked at the Iranian embassy and had himself proudly photographed together with Hezbollah's spiritual leader, Shaykh Fadlallah.

The prompt reaction of the Jewish community in Rome to his Holocaust-denying publications made Palazzi convert overnight into a Zionist - so extreme a Zionist that he currently denies the existence of a Palestinian people and accuses Sharon of being a pacifist. Although his real position on the Israel/Palestine issue is close to that of the late rabbi Kahane, Palazzi has managed to gain credit with well meaning friends of Israel, at least in the USA.

Inside Italy, Palazzi is best known however for his blanket accusations against all other Muslims in the country, whom he calls "terrorists", "Communists", "Nazis", "Anti-semites" and "Wahhabites" (he changed his views overnight on them too), often concocting false evidence against them to prove his point. Something highly dangerous in the overwrought atmosphere of post-September 11 Italy.

However he also hurls his curses against countless other personalities - all of Italy's leading cinema and theatre stars including Roberto Benigni, Kofi Annan and the Pope, amongst countless others.

One of Palazzi's closest collaborators, Mohammed Shawky, an Egyptian living in Rome, was tortured and then strangled in a mysterious murder. The police had previously raided Shawky's "Islamic School", finding - to their surprise - that it hosted no less than thirty pretty Ukrainian girls. Shawky had previously been arrested for possessing heroin, but the authorities were forced to release him when it turned out that he had acted within the law, in his role as a police informer trying to frame an international drug dealer.

Palazzi is vice-president of a marginal group of Jewish fundamentalists whose purpose is not interreligious dialogue, but the dissemination of "Noahism", basically a form of Judaism for Gentiles. This leaves us with the doubt whether Palazzi can still be considered a Muslim at all.
You can read all the details here:  http://wwww.ifrance.com/amipalazzi/gb/palazzi01_gb.htm

Italian language version
Note: the Italian version contains much more material than the English one.
Site by Francesca Russo
e-mail

Note: I read everything you write. I don't usually answer, for the very simple reason that this website speaks of dictators, people who claim to work for intelligence agencies and a murder. To say the least, I don't want my computer hacked.

However, most people ask me two basic questions:

* "Why did you set up this site?" Basically, because I found the story fascinating.

* "Is what you say true?" I put in a large, and doubtless boring, amount of footnotes to document my assertions. You can check them out yourself. In any case, about 90% of what is here comes from material which Palazzi himself has written or put up on his own website, so this should not be too difficult. This is why I don't find it necessary to answer questions like "please show me your credentials".

If you - "you" including of course Palazzi - have any complaints or corrections, I will take them into account and answer in the text. So come back to the site after a week or so to see.

Palazzi has never really answered the contents of this site. He has spoken vaguel of "libel", called everybody who criticises him a "Nazi", a "terrorist" and other pleasant names, and has accused various people of "being Francesca Russo".

He has also spoken angrily about vast conspiracies against him, variously led by Opus Dei, the Communists or al-Qa'ida. This may satisfy some of his simpler minded admirers, but is not really helpful.

More on this site

If you enjoyed Palazzi's adventures, we would like to point out that there is another, equally singular Muslim around, Stephen Schwartz, alias "Comrade Sandalio" or "Suleyman Ahmed", a self-styled "ultra-left Communist" who suddenly discovered both right-wing money and Islam, and found a useful way of putting the two together. The most enjoyable articles on this fellow are to be found in Justin Raimondo's The Voa Follies ( http://www.ifrance.com/amipalazzi/gb/justin.html and The Red and the Hack ( http://www.ifrance.com/amipalazzi/gb/0393.html)by Kevin Keating.