bayu-aji
Milan, Italy – At the al-Wahid mosque, nestled within a quiet courtyard in the bustling Navigli district, the mood among worshippers gathering for Friday prayers was one of bewilderment and frustration. The source of their concern is the Italian government's newly announced plan to prohibit full-face coverings, including the burqa and niqab, in schools. For many in Italy's small Muslim community, the proposal appears to be a solution in search of a problem, one that they argue misrepresents their daily reality and serves a purely political agenda.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni unveiled the proposed ban on Sunday during a rally of her nationalist conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI) party. She framed the measure as a step toward gender equality, declaring that students must attend school with their faces uncovered. "In Italy no one, in the name of a real or supposed tradition, can decide that a young woman must hide herself," Meloni told the crowd. The state-run Ansa news agency has reported that only around 500 to 600 female students across the country currently wear a full-face covering, a statistic that critics say underscores the disproportionate attention the issue is receiving.
Mulayka Laura Enriello, a 58-year-old high school mathematics teacher, expressed disbelief at the government's focus. In her entire career, she said, she has never seen a student wear a face-covering garment, though some schoolgirls choose to wear a headscarf. "Those girls who want to wear a hijab to school do so, no one bothers them, neither teacher nor student," she told Al Jazeera. Enriello described the proposal as inhumane, stressing that if a girl were to arrive at school wearing a burqa, her duty as an educator would be to treat her as a minor who believes she is doing something good, not to send her away.
The mosque's imam, Yahya Pallavicini, was even more pointed in his criticism, calling the ban a "false problem." He argued that it draws public attention to a garment used by a tiny minority and distorts the broader perception of Islam in Italy. Pallavicini, who also serves as vice president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community, characterized the plan as an example of "intellectual dishonesty" being deployed to malign a segment of Muslim society that is less palatable to the Italian public. He warned that it promotes a vision of a white supremacist society where anything different is caricatured through the specious use of the burqa.
Meloni's party is not alone in framing garments worn by some Muslim women as contrary to Western secular values. Female activists from the French far-right group Collectif Nemesis recently staged a theatrical protest at the annual rally of Italy's populist League party in Pontida. During the stunt, they removed full-face coverings on stage while the crowd shouted "liberta," or freedom. Renata Pepicelli, a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Pisa, noted that the spectacle echoed the actions of French colonial authorities in Algeria in 1958, when groups of Algerian women removed and burned their veils, sometimes under coercion, as a show of allegiance to Paris. She argued that the veil remains a battlefield, and its removal continues to symbolize social predominance.
The decree itself, however, does not explicitly mention burqas or niqabs. Instead, it 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, explained that while the directive has taken effect, Parliament can still scrutinize its proportionality to its stated objectives and its compatibility with religious freedom rights. Italian law has long prohibited wearing items in public that make personal identification difficult, except for a "valid reason." According to Tonti, this clause has been at the center of the debate between religious freedom and public order, and over the years, jurisprudence has progressively recognized religious observance as a valid reason to exclude such conduct from prosecution.
Observers suggest the timing of the ban reveals deeper political calculations. With the campaign for the 2027 elections already under way, Meloni faces a challenge from her right as the National Future party of former general Roberto Vannacci gains ground. Since its creation in February, the party has reached eight percent in public opinion surveys, putting pressure on the prime minister to shore up her nationalist credentials. Lorenzo Castellani, a professor of History of Political Institutions at LUISS University, said Meloni is attempting to project a more hardline direction to give a strong signal to right-wing voters for whom security and immigration are primary concerns.
Castellani predicted that Meloni would center her electoral campaign on three topics: immigration, security, and political stability. The first two, he explained, allow her to speak directly to her electorate without leaving Vannacci to take the lead on identity issues. The third is what distinguishes her proposal, presenting her not only as a capable leader who can respond to demands but also as the head of a government that can bring them forward. Meloni currently leads Italy's longest-lasting government since World War II, having overtaken Silvio Berlusconi's record of 1,412 consecutive days in power earlier this month. Castellani expects her to bank that result in the next elections, linking immigration and security to the theme of government continuity.
For the worshippers at Milan's al-Wahid mosque, however, the debate feels detached from their lived experience. Enriello lamented that politicians forget there are humans behind their divisive rhetoric. The proposed ban, she and others argue, targets a phantom threat while stigmatizing a community that has long been part of Italy's social fabric. As the decree moves through Parliament, the question of whether it is a genuine measure for gender equality or a calculated political maneuver remains at the heart of the controversy. For now, Italy's Muslims are left to wonder why a garment worn by so few has become such a central symbol in the nation's political arena.
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