QUESTIONS
Frequently asked questions
The objections the project receives most often, with the answers that can be given in the present state of things.
Is this a form of extraterritoriality?
No, and the distinction is substantial. No exemption is asked for, and no territory, no fiscal autonomy, no migration policy and no exemption from laws of general application is obtained. The ordinary authorisations are applied for as anyone applies for them: the house, and the cooperative for the farming side, complete the formalities and ask the competent administrations for the permits the law provides for — building, health, water abstraction, entry in the registers. The association is subject to Italian criminal law, labour law, tax law and building regulations exactly like a private school.
What changes is only the relationship among the members, who accept by contract rules of work and of common life. The same faculties are in daily use among religious orders, professional bodies and sports federations.
Is it a religious body?
No. The statutes say so in express terms: the association does not conduct worship, is not the expression or emanation of any confession or religious authority, and does not proselytise.
The religious affiliation of the rifāq is their own affair. The house makes a space available for the prayer of those who wish it, and neither attendance nor abstention has any bearing on admission, on membership rights, on the assessment of the work or on continued residence.
Is a house for a single community not a form of separation?
It would be a separation if membership derived from origin. That is not the case: one is admitted by name, on one’s own application, and any application may be refused. Nobody belongs to the house on account of origin, descent or faith.
To this is added the reciprocity clause, by which the statutes and the rules are available, on the same terms, to any community that wants to found a similar house. The history of the fondaci shows that, when the agreement stops being reciprocal, the house becomes a guarded enclosure within a generation; the safeguards serve to make that passage structurally expensive.
Why is nothing sold to the public?
For an arithmetical reason. Work sold at retail margins does not sustain properly paid masters, and a workshop that begins to make small objects for sale shifts the apprentices’ time to where the return is immediate, ceasing to be a school within two years.
Production is therefore to commission, in single pieces or short series, for architecture and interior practices, restoration sites, institutions, collectors and art publishers.
What does a funder get?
An economic position, in one of the three forms described on the page on support, and no power over the assembly. The statutes expressly exclude powers of appointment, additional voting rights, special categories of members and the power to suspend the effect of resolutions, and forbid the contribution of means to be made conditional on the granting of any of these powers.
The paying guesthouse is the part of the operation with revenue, margin and a way out, and it is financed separately with its own investors.
What happens if the project fails?
The five conditions that would count as a verdict are fixed in advance and published. The remaining property, in the event of dissolution, is transferred to another Third Sector body with similar purposes, in accordance with the law.
It is worth noting that the useful result does not depend on success. A house that fails according to criteria declared in advance produces a piece of information that does not exist today, namely whether rules accepted by contract can hold a community together without the permission of a State.
Do minors take part in the life of the house?
No. The association is made up of adults, and no minor is admitted to common life, to lodging, to work shifts or to the building site.
Educational activities addressed to the young people of the area take place during the day, without overnight stays, in distinct spaces, normally at schools or training institutions of the territory, with dedicated staff and in compliance with the legal obligations on the protection of minors.
Can it be visited?
Not yet. The property has not been acquired and the restoration has not begun. There will then be three kinds of stay, and what distinguishes them is the reason one comes. Whoever wants to know the house because he intends to stay in it does the trial at Dar al-Bidaya, paid. Whoever wants to know it without putting himself forward as a member asks for a fixed-term stay in the same wing, from two weeks to three months, and pays nothing, because hospitality is free. Whoever comes instead to spend a few days in a beautiful place is a guest of the Munya, pays a rate, and the Munya is a distinct entity that opens no way into the association.
In the meantime the useful way to get in touch is to write.