Alarm in Italy over law to close Muslim prayer spaces

ROME (AA) – A controversial law proposed by Italy’s ruling far-right coalition has raised concerns among the country’s Muslim community.

The proposed law aims to close hundreds of Islamic prayer spaces.

Both the country’s 2.5 million Muslims and the opposition are running up a storm against the law.

The bill, presented by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers in Italy party, targets prayer rooms that are not recognized as mosques.

Prayers will no longer be allowed in spaces that are not registered as places of worship.

This also applies to the premises of various Muslim cultural organizations.

Prominent Muslim leader Yassine Lafram called this law absurd and a violation of freedom of worship.

According to the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy (UCOII), there were 1,217 Muslim prayer rooms in Italy in 2017.

“It’s absurd. It will go against the freedom of practicing a religion, when the state should actually be creating conditions allowing people to exercise their right to practice any religion,” said Lafram, who is also president of the UCOII.

Only six of these were officially mosques and about only 50 others fit into the authorization of places of worship.

The rest were primarily classified as cultural associations, but were also used as prayer spaces.

Most of them were set up in garages, warehouses, apartments and basements.

The bill aims to crack down on these places.

“Over the past decade we have seen a widespread proliferation of associations of social promotion, which de facto have as prevalent or exclusive function that of managing worship places for the Islamic communities in buildings that do not meet the urbanistic, structural and safety requirements needed for such use,” the bill says in its preamble.

The politicians promoting the bill have also made no secret of the fact that these Islamic prayer spaces are to be banned.

The bill is now being discussed in the Environment Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Italian Parliament.

Fabrizio Rossi, the Brothers of Italy deputy in Italy who drafted the bill, said it will force cultural centers to obtain a permit if they want to use their spaces for prayer.

Opposition politicians have also voiced concern at the bill. 

“In Italy, there are many parishes and oratories in buildings which do not comply with urbanistic rules and, rightly so, are not shut down,” Angelo Bonelli, a member of the Greens and Left Alliance, said in a letter to the parliamentary speaker , urging him to block the draft law.

“It’s an unacceptable discrimination.”

Experts say acquiring authorization to use a building as a worship place has always been a very long, cumbersome, and expensive process in Italy.

Attempts to constructs mosques have often been met with hostility by local authorities and populations, which has left several projects across the country in bureaucratic limbo.

This is why Muslims in Italy had to resort to opening such centers and use them as prayer spaces, according to religious leaders and experts.