From Reuters, with thanks to Twostellas:
ITALY’S justice minister, a member of the right-wing Northern League party, was today accused of fuelling anti-Islamic sentiment in Italy after saying he would fine women wearing the all-covering burka.
Roberto Castelli said an Italian law banning the covering of a person’s face in public would be applied to women wearing the full-length religious robe that hides the head and face. “To go around with your face covered is a crime, you can’t do it,” he told
reporters.“Women who do so must be reported to the police and fined.”
Mr Castelli’s outburst is the latest in a series to make headlines as overwhelmingly Catholic Italy comes to grips with a growing Muslim
population some see as a blessing for the economy and others as a threat.Opposition politicians demanded his resignation and that of other Northern League ministers, whose party has come to be defined by its anti-immigrant rhetoric…
Italy, with a population of 57 million, is home to an estimated one million officially registered Muslims, making Islam the country’s second-largest religion.
But social services groups say the number is much higher and growing…
And Castelli also had something to say about the Fallaci trial travesty:
A judge last month ordered celebrated Italian writer and
journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial on charges of defaming Islam in a recent trilogy written in response to the September 11 attacks on US cities.In the books, which sold more than one million copies in Italy, she
complained that Muslim immigrants had “multiplied like rats”.Mr Castelli said the author, who lives in New York, would not be found guilty because the Government would change the defamation law to clear her, local news agencies ANSA and AGI reported.