Abdul Hadi Palazzi - Manipulating Muslims IV

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.

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

 http://www.ifrance.com/amipalazzi/gb/palazzi03_gb.htm


Palazzi's titles: the University that Wasn't

The first nagging question concerns Palazzi's titles.

The Jerusalem Post calls him a professor at the "Institute of Anthropological Research in Rome".

In his curriculum vitae ( http://israpundit.com/archives/003433.html), Abdul Hadi Palazzi styles himself "Resident Professor of Middle East Studies, Research Institute for Anthropological Sciences, Rome".

Now, if you look for "Research Institute for Anthropological Sciences, Rome" in Google, you will find that all 15 references are... to Palazzi's own curriculum.

Google of course is not infallible. However, it is strange to see that only one result comes up for the Italian version of "Institute of Anthropological Research in Rome", which is "Istituto di ricerca antropologica a Roma." This is actually the dance school ( http://www.sonda.it/sondashop/schede_prodotti/scheda.asp?idlibro=114)of Raffaella Rossellini, daughter of the

film director. Rather hard to imagine Palazzi's hefty figure thumping on the floor with a group of lithe young dancers. We could not call to check, since "Istituto di ricerca antropologica" does not appear in the phone directory.

Could the "Institute of Anthropological Research" be some kind of University faculty? We called to check whether he works with any of the three state universities of Rome. The replies were three polite denials.

There is an alternative possibility. On one of his own websites, Palazzi claims to have co-operated with something called the "Training Institute on Anthropological Sciences" (Istituto di Formazione per le Scienze Antropologiche or IFOSCA), and

one version of his c.v. gives this as the Italian translation for "Research Institute for Anthropological Sciences,". The name vaguely resembles the one mentioned in the Jerusalem Post article; however a search for "IFOSCA" on Google only brings

us back to our point of departure: Palazzi's own website. No further research was possible, since there is no entry either for "Istituto di Formazione per le Scienze Antropologiche" or "ifosca" in any telephone directory of the whole Lazio region,

including Rome. Since even my retired grandmother has a phone, it is surprising that a prestigious academic institution does not.

Now let us take a look at the "University of Velletri" where Palazzi claims to be a professor. In September 2002 - over a year after Palazzi made this claim - the inhabitants of the small town of Velletri near Rome were still hopefully looking

forward ( http://www.centrostudiveliterno.org/studi.htm) to the opening "within a few years" of some university faculties in Velletri. Actually, one already existed: the Enology course of the University of Tuscia. Enology, for non-experts, means

"wine making", a rather unlikely profession for a supposedly teetotalling Muslim. However, when we called the University of Tuscia, they firmly denied having any person called Massimo Palazzi on their staff.

Over a year after I published this article, Palazzi was still boasting of his Velletri professorship.

Of course, people don't need titles. On the other hand, they don't need to make them up, either. However, there is more to come.

NEXT ( http://www.ifrance.com/amipalazzi/gb/palazzi04_gb.htm)

PREVIOUS ( http://www.ifrance.com/amipalazzi/gb/palazzi02_gb.htm)

ITALIAN LANGUAGE VERSION

HOME PAGE (( http://www.ifrance.com/amipalazzi/index.html)

e-mail