One elected official has the courage to speak candidly about the terrorist threat and to take un-PC action. From The Telegraph, with thanks to Susan.
Officially, Enzo Bortolotti has merely forbidden the concealment of people’s faces in the town of Azzano Decimo (population 13,000), for reasons of “public safety” in the light of the international terrorism threat….
Azzano Decimo has a small but rapidly growing immigrant population from South Asia and North Africa. The mayor openly states that he sees this as a threat to local traditions.
“I am not a racist,” insisted Mr Bortolotti, whose ordinance was signed on July 27 and has sparked a nationwide debate about liberty. “I only want to protect my own culture. I have no doubts that Italy’s future will be one of a multi-racial society. But people who come here must come with respect for our laws and traditions.”
Mr Bortolotti says all he has done is to apply a forgotten 1970s law introduced in the fight against domestic terrorism.
None the less, he is expansive on the difficulties presented by immigration. “Muslims who have migrated here are not always showing the same respect for Italy and its culture that their own countries themselves demand of foreigners,” he said.
He called Islamic culture “repressive”, and said high birth rates among Muslim immigrants threatened to “swamp our culture”. He added: “Only the other day five women in Turkey drowned because the men who could have saved them were not allowed to touch them. How can you call that a civilisation?”
That story was reported in the Italian Corriere della Serra, and brought to my attention by several people, but I couldn’t find it on their website online.
He said he first discovered his mission to “save” his country from the threat of incoming cultures, when, shortly after the September 11 attacks, a Muslim rights campaigner in Italy described Christ on the crucifix as “a shrivelled corpse”, with no place on classroom and hospital walls.
“I became worried about Italian culture,” said Mr Bortolotti, a dentist who in his two years as mayor has armed traffic wardens and begun plastering Azzano’s streets with CCTV cameras to improve public safety, even though crime rates are low….
Renato Favretto, an opposition councillor in Azzano who opposed the ban, said the league’s growing influence in Italy’s wealthy north-east was rooted in the area’s change of fortune, from a poor rural to a wealthy industrial area.
“Unfortunately the economic growth has not been matched with increased social awareness, including tolerance,” he said.
Favretto made no statement, at least in this article, about the need to ensure that Muslim immigrants have no attachment to violent jihad and Sharia.