In Milan’s al-Wahid mosque, tucked in a peaceful inner courtyard within the bustling Navigli district, worshippers attending Friday prayers were perplexed by the Italian government’s recent decision to ban the burqa and niqab in schools.
Mulayka Laura Enriello, a 58-year-old high school maths teacher, said that while some schoolgirls wear a headscarf, she had never in her career seen students wear face-covering garments.
“Those girls who want to wear a (hijab) to school do so, no one bothers them, neither teacher nor student,” she told Al Jazeera.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni outlined the proposed ban on Sunday during a rally of her nationalist conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, pitching it as a move towards gender equality.
“You must go to school with your face uncovered,” said Meloni. “And in Italy no one, in the name of a real or supposed tradition, can decide that a young woman must hide herself.”
The state-run Ansa news agency has reported that as few as 500 to 600 female students currently wear a full-face covering.
Enriello said the proposal feels inhumane.
“If a girl shows up at school wearing a burqa, I can’t tell her to go home,” she said. “I have to treat her as a minor who probably thinks she is doing something good.”
The mosque’s imam, Yahya Pallavicini, said the ban raised a “false problem”, focusing public attention on a garment used by a small minority and warps the “perception” of Islam.
“This is an attempt to present a unified model of society, a society that is white supremacist and if something is different it is caricatured by the specious use of the burqa,” he told Al Jazeera.
The plan is an example of “intellectual dishonesty” being used to malign a small segment of Muslim society that is less palatable to the Italian public, added Pallavicini, who is also the vice president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community.
Political symbol to critique Islam
Meloni’s party is not alone in framing garments worn by some Muslims as contrary to Western secular values.
Female activists from the French far-right group Collectif Nemesis staged a theatrical protest at the annual rally held by Italy’s populist League party in Pontida last week, in which they removed full-face coverings on stage as the crowd shouted “liberta” (“freedom”).
Renata Pepicelli, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Pisa, said the stunt was reminiscent of the French colonial authorities in Algeria in 1958, when groups of Algerian women removed and burned their veils – at times under coercion – in a show of alliance with Paris.
The veil is still a “battlefield” and its removal symbolises social predominance, she said.
“The ban that Meloni decided to put forward must be ascribed to this climate,” she told Al Jazeera.
The decree, however, refrains from openly mentioning burqas and niqabs but instead forbids participation at school with a full-face covering and “in any other modality that prevents identification”.
Nico Tonti, a researcher in the department of legal studies at the University of Bologna, said that while the directive has taken effect, Parliament can scrutinise its “proportionality” to its stated objectives and its compatibility with religious freedom rights.
Tonti added that Italian law has so far prohibited wearing items in public that make personal identification difficult, except for a “valid reason”.
“This clause has been at the centre of the debate between religious freedom and public order,” he told Al Jazeera. “Over the years, jurisprudence has progressively recognised religious observance as a valid reason to exclude the conduct from prosecution.”
Challenge from the right
Observers say the timing suggests political calculations behind the ban.
With the campaign for the 2027 elections under way, Meloni faces a challenge from her right as the National Future party of former general Roberto Vannacci gains ground, reaching eight percent in public opinion surveys since its creation in February.
Lorenzo Castellani, professor of History of Political Institutions at LUISS University, said the prime minister is attempting to project a more hardline, nationalist direction.
“Meloni is approving this legislation to give a strong signal to right-wing voters, for whom security and immigration are among the main concerns,” he told Al Jazeera.
Castellani predicted that Meloni would bet on three topics in her electoral campaign – immigration, security and political stability.
“The first two allow her to speak to her electorate without leaving Vannacci to take the lead on identity issues,” the analyst said.
“The third is what makes her proposal different, presenting herself not only as a capable leader who can respond to certain demands, but also as the head of a government that can bring them forward.”
While Italy is famed for political instability, Meloni leads the country’s longest-lasting government since World War II, overtaking Silvio Berlusconi’s record of 1,412 consecutive days in power earlier this month.
Castellani predicted that Meloni would attempt to bank that result in the next elections. “She will try to link immigration and security to [the third] topic: government continuity.”
