From the archives: In an Italian prison, the call to Islam

The guards, heavy brass keys swinging from their belts, open and shut the metal gates to each floor of the labyrinthine Bollate prison as the Muslim call to prayer echoes in the corridors. Prisoners rush to the makeshift mosques that have sprouted in every building.

At the end of the hall on the fourth floor of Building 1, a hand-lettered paper sign proclaims, in Italian, moschea — mosque. Furnishings inside are sparse, just three green prayer rugs, pointing eastward, and on the wall a plaque with verses from the Koran.

Abdelfattah Jendoubi, serving a sentence on drug charges, throws on a dishdasha, pulls off his shoes and makes his way to the room.

The 42-year-old Tunisian is joined by two other men. He is apologetic, saying turnout is better on Fridays. Generally, though, younger Muslims in the prison are not very religious, he says.

He hopes to change that.

"I want to teach the young beautiful things," he says, but it is unclear whether authorities, who lack Arabic speakers to monitor his preaching, would agree with his definition of beauty. "They have to change their lives. God wants them to leave the life of crime."

Jendoubi's mission is a difficult one: reaching out to the young men confined within these sterile walls on the outskirts of a city known the world over as Italy's vibrant fashion capital. About 30% of the inmates in Bollate are Muslim, officials say; that's in a country where Muslims make up just 2% of the population of 58 million, although there is a higher concentration of them in northern Italy around Milan.

Their burgeoning numbers in prison are a reproach to Europe's efforts to integrate its immigrants, and a boost to radical imams and hard-core militants who use cellblocks to attract followers and spread a doctrine of violence.

Many of the Muslim inmates here arrived in Italy alone, sometimes as young as 14, hoping to find an uncle or a cousin, or even a distant relative, and burdened with the overly optimistic expectations of their family back in Morocco, or Tunisia, or Algeria.

Once in Italy, they can find themselves trapped in a vicious circle. Unable to obtain proper work and residency documents, they live on the fringes, perhaps turning to crime to survive.

Marginalized in society, they are doubly marginalized in prison, outsiders in an institution where Italian clout and influence are supreme.

Their hopes of sending money to families who sacrificed to send them to Europe are vanquished. They will probably be deported, and going home as ex-cons will bring shame.

That fate probably awaits Bilel Sefir, an inmate with an air of quiet desperation. Sefir left his native Tunisia for France four years ago, when he was 17. After a couple of years he moved to Italy, thinking, mistakenly, that it would be easier to obtain residency papers.

Alone but for a friend who had come with him from France, he found odd jobs as a plumber and was able to support himself for about a year, until he was arrested in a crackdown on drug dealers.

"I made a big mistake," he says in a voice barely above a whisper. Sefir, tall but slight, with wavy dark hair, received a relatively short sentence of 14 months and expects to be sent back to Tunisia after his release.

Like Jendoubi, he takes some comfort in his faith. Sefir says he is able to pray five times a day, as devout Muslims do, with little trouble. In fact, he finds it easier to pray inside jail than outside, where mosques are far away and tolerance more rare.

"I have the time," he says. "Once in a while, other prisoners make fun of me and ask me why I do it the way I do and why do I keep praying. But most people are respectful.

"I pray mostly that God forgives me for what I've done."

Jendoubi, in his quest to save souls, sees far more hardened cases in Bollate. A greater number of young Muslim men here are like Mohammed Derrag, 23, a heavily tattooed Moroccan. He does not pray at all, saying, "This is not the moment."