From Islam to the Moon An astronomy outreach activity from an intercultural perspective.

In this work I will present some results of my post-graduation masters thesis in 2017. The vocational masters title was "Intercultural Studies, theory and practice for the reception of asylum seekers". The whole work is based upon a specific activity of public outreach for astronomy with a group of Imams from different Islamic countries, which is an undoubtedly underrepresented group in Europe. Even though there are more than six million Muslim refugees (most of them from Syria or sub-Saharan Africa) in Italy, they are very often discriminated for their ethnicity, culture and religion; we hence have had difficulties in communicating because of a language barrier and gap in basic scientific knowledge. But the differences are more complex and subtler than these. This is the reason why I tried to do a psycho-sociological analysis of this meeting, going deep into the field of intercultural studies and stressing those aspects as-related to stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. The activity began on Ramadan on 27 May 2017, and was repeated one year later on 16 May 2018. While doing the report and the analysis of these meetings I stressed not only the astronomical concepts but also the aspects of social psychology that are particularly relevant to intercultural communication, as a greater understanding of certain socio-psychological concepts may increase the effectiveness of such POE activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]