From September 5th to September 9th in Gazzada (Varese) there will be a conference entitled the 28th European Week on "The religious history of Islam in the Balkans". This conference, sponsored by the Paul VI Ambrosian Foundation, in cooperation with the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, proposes to analyse the "phases, methods and results of the conquest and spreading of Islam in the course of the long Ottoman domination of a large part of South Eastern Europe". This is an appointment now deeply-rooted in the course of the years, that as the organisers explain, provides an answer to a "project addressing an in depth analysis of religious and cultural roots in various European countries since 1979". After the end of the Ottoman Empire, the spreading of Islam in the Balkans came to an end, "but its presence has remained numerically important, culturally strong and nowadays also shows a decidedly more political aspect" in an area in which "there are still unsolved political, national and religious issues". In such a context "Christian Churches seem to be invested with a specific historical responsibility that cannot be deferred, to assume the duty to make peace possible". The subject will be addressed by Italian and Slav scholars, among them Paolo Luigi Branca (the Milan Catholic University), Nenad Moaèanin (University of Zagreb), Eustratios Zeghinis (University of Salonicco), Aksinia Durova and Maria Polimirova (University of Sofia), Rade Petroviæ (University of Sarajevo), Alexandre Popovic and Xavier Bougarel (Centre d’histoire du domaine turc, Paris).
