A group of Muslim women wearing modest beach wear were harassed by a group of women in northern Italy claiming that they can’t go in the water with their clothing.
The right-wing mayor of the small town of Monfalcone in Friuli-Venezia Giulia wrote a letter to the Muslim community saying the territory shouldn’t accept the “Islamization” of their customs and to respect the region’s rules on beachwear.
The Italian constitution guarantees full freedom to its citizens but several governments, largely in the north of the country, have attempted to ban various types of head coverings over the years.
In 2006, the Regional Administrative Tribunal of Friuli-Venezia Giulia ruled that the mayor of Trieste could not ban head coverings for security reasons under the 152/1975 because it violated people’s religious freedoms.
The 152/1975 anti-terrorism law states that people cannot wear masks or motorcycle helmets in public to evade identification.
This law has been cited multiple times as cause for banning religious head and face coverings in the northern regions of Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Lombardy, whose regional and local governments have historically been controlled by either the right-wing Forza Italia party or the far-right Lega party.
In 2021, the European Court of Justice ruled that people who work with the public who refuse to remove their hijab or other religious or ideological clothing could be fired from their job in order to present a “neutral image towards customers or to prevent social disputes.”