Industrial shed can't be used as mosque

(ANSA) - Milan, August 28 - A shed built for commercial, industrial or artisanal use cannot be used as a place of worship, where hundreds of people enter for religious festivals with a significant impact on the city's urban design. The Lombardy regional administrative court (TAR) wrote this in its decision to uphold a measure brought in by the Cantù town council with which last June the administration ordered the cultural association Assalam to stop using a building in Via Milan - that had been at the center of polemics in recent years - as a place of worship even during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In rejecting the appeal by the association, the Milan judges said that "the large number of people entering the building during religious celebrations" is a use "of the premises that, due to its urban and building effects, requires authorization prior to build" a place specifically for the purpose. The judges said that the association's argument that "not having been expressly prohibited, use as a place of worship is implicitly authorized" could not be upheld. The court added that the town council, "once it had verified that the change in use without a permit to build, correctly applied the sanctions foreseen" for works that had "not received building permits, ordering the removal or demolition". The judges instead upheld the association's appeal of the town council's successive measure that threatened to take the building away to put it up for sale.