Italy's top court was blasted
as "Islamic" Wednesday after it quashed a Lombardy regional law
restricting the construction of mosques.
Lombardy Governor Roberto Maroni, of the rightwing populist
anti-immigrant and anti-euro Northern League, said that the left
were hailing "Allah" after Italy's Constitutional Court
overturned the regional regulation limiting the development of
new mosques.
"The Constitutional Court has rejected our law regulating
the construction of new mosques," Maroni said on his Twitter
account.
"The left celebrates: Allah(u) Akbar".
Premier Matteo Renzi's government appealed to the
Constitutional Court last year after Maroni's centre-right
administration for the region around Milan approved strict new
planning laws for places of worship.
Central government said the regulation breached the
principle of equality between citizens and religions.
The Constitutional Court struck down the regulation on
Tuesday and will release the explanation of its ruling in the
coming weeks.
Northern League leader Matteo Salvini blasted the
Constitutional Court as "Islamic, not Italian".
"It is an accomplice in illegal immigration," he added.
In contrast Davide Piccardo, the coordinator of the CAIM
umbrella group for Islamic associations in Milan, Monza and
Brianza, expressed "great satisfaction" at the ruling.
"Now the city of Milan no longer has excuses to not
complete the allocation of areas for the construction of
mosques," Piccardo said.
"The law was a legal disgrace and a case of unacceptable
incivility and intolerance in Lombardy, where over 400,000
Muslims live and were considered second-class citizens.
"It's serious that the public institutions were used to
deny the rights of a part of the community".
Piccardo praised central government for opposing the
regional regulation and called for a national law to prevent
similar situations in other parts of Italy.
Paolo Grossi, the new president of Italy's Constitutional
Court, hailed the ruling.
"Our concern is to be custodians of fundamental rights: the
essential nucleus of the sentence is based on avoiding
discriminations, as the Court adjudged were present in the law,"
he said.
The formerly secessionist Northern League, which has
expanded from its northern Italian power base to become the
biggest rightwing party in Italy, has long been against the
construction of new mosques on its home turf in northern Italy.
In 2009 the League demonstrated against plans to build a
mosque in Genoa with a 'salami protest'.
In 2007 a Northern League heavyweight, former minister
Roberto Calderoli, called for a 'pig day' battle against mosque
building on Italian soil.
Calderoli, who was reform minister under the previous,
Silvio Berlusconi-led government and was now deputy Senate
speaker, said pigs should be brought in to thwart plans for the
construction of a major mosque in Bologna.
He said he had used the same tactic with success in
another northern city, Lodi.
In February 2006, Calderoli was forced to quit as reform
minister after he sported a T-shirt emblazoned with the
cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which at the time were
causing a wave of international Muslim protests.
Calderoli's act was followed by violent demonstrations
in Libya in which the Italian consulate in Benghazi was
attacked. Some 15 people were killed after local police
opened fire on a crowd trying to storm the consulate.
The League has frequently caused rows with intolerant
stances against Muslims and immigrants in general.
In the wake of the September 2001 terror attacks on the
US, the party demanded that mosques and Islamic centres be
shut down and Italy's frontiers closed to Muslims.
More recently, a League member called for the expulsion
of Muslim immigrants who could not be 'vouched for' by an
Italian citizen. The party has also spearheaded campaigns to
ban burqas and veils in public.
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