by Giovanni Giacalone
On Friday, December 12, 2025, Turin’s Appeal Court released an Egyptian imam who was being held in a detention center for illegal aliens in Sicily awaiting to be deported by order of the Italian Ministry of Interior.
The individual, 47-year-old Mohamed Mahmoud Ibrahim Shahin, had been preaching at the Islamic center in via Saluzzo, not far from Turin’s Porta Nuova Station for over a decade.
At the end of November, the counter-terror police knocked on Shahin’s door in the San Salvario neighborhood, detained him as his residence permit was revoked and he was transferred to Sicily. The preacher’s lawyers immediately appealed, asking for his release and for “international protection” as, according to the defense, Shahin’s life would be threatened in Egypt, due to his opposition to President Abdelfattah al-Sisi.
Therefore, Shahin is now free, after a decision taken by judge Ludovico Morello, and he is now waiting to know the outcome of his “international protection” request. It is worth noting that the Italian authorities had already refused Shahin’s request for citizenship due to security reasons.
However, a chorus of support for Shahin was raised from the Islamic community and the ever-present left wing; a chorus that had never been seen with anyone else deported for security reasons. Some of them have even appealed to the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella.
This mobilization has little to do with spontaneity and seems almost organized and coordinated. Among the voices raised in Shahin’s favor is that of the Bishop of Pinerolo, Derio Olivero, President of the CEI Commission for Ecumenism and Dialogue. According to the latter, Shahin is a man of “peace and dialogue”.
Moreover, Don Andrea Pacini (Diocesan Commission for Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue), Luca Minuto (Parish Vicar of Madonna di Campagna), Father Piero Demaria (Consolata missionary), Sister Julieta Joao and Sister Paola Pignatelli (Daughters of Mary Help of Christians Association 2PR) also signed the letter in Shahin’s support.
Is Mohamed Shahin truly a man of “peace and dialogue”? His statements and social media content seem to be telling something quite different. And, by the way, such content disappeared from the preacher’s Facebook account shortly after he was released.
As indicated by the Italian authorities, referring to the massacre of October 7, 2023, Shahin said:
“I personally agree with what happened on October 7. We are not here for violence. But what happened on October 7, 2023, is not a violation, it is not violence.”
Moreover, on the day of the massacre, Shahin published a series of posts in Arabic accompanied by Palestinian flags, including the following: “For the tenth time, Walid Omri says that what is happening is beyond imagination and the entity (the Zionist entity) has not seen it in its worst nightmare. O Lord, O Lord, O Allah, grant us joy in Palestine, dear liberator of Abiya.”
Shahin’s account also features several posts depicting Hamas founder Sheikh Yasin and Hamas leaders Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh.
Shahin had been in touch with known jihadists and is also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, as indicated by the Italian authorities. He took part in pro-Morsy demonstrations, shared numerous posts in his support and plenty of others against al-Sisi.
In 2012, Shahin was photographed inside his mosque in Turin next to Mohamed Ibrahim Abderrahman, president of the Islamic Alliance of Italy, which was blacklisted by the UAE in 2014, indicated as the Italian offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. On that same event, the mosque hosted Musa Cerantonio, a former ISIS propagandist who has been called perhaps “the most famous jihadist in Australia”.
It is worth recalling that the Muslim Brotherhood is already banned in Egypt, the Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Austria, and it was recently targeted by the Trump administration which is getting ready to blacklist it, while the states of Texas and Florida have already taken action against it.
Moreover, a recent report released by the French government highlighted how the Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to national cohesion in France and advised that action must be taken to stop the infiltration and the spread of political Islamism.
It’s clear that within the Catholic Church there are individuals who are either ill-informed about the facts or unable to distinguish between “opinion” and “support for terrorism.”
Commenting Shahin’s release, the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, rightly stated: “How can we protect the safety of Italians if every initiative in this direction is systematically annulled by some judges?”