Don't ban mosques

Following the arrest in Milan of two Moroccans who allegedly misused an Islamic culture centre for a conspiracy, the Lega Nord party and Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni have applied for an embargo on the building of mosques. The liberal daily La Stampa fears that this could block the construction of mosques indefinitely. "It is a good sign that the Lega Nord chose to go through parliament when one considers that until only recently [Reform] Minister [Roberto] Calderoli, a Lega member, was threatening to drive pigs on to pieces of land intended for Muslim places of worship, thus desecrating them. ... But declaring a moratorium on mosque building until a new agreement is reached, as the Lega proposes, would in practice mean blocking them for an indefinite period. In a country where millions of Muslims now live, the ban could have the opposite of the intended effect by giving those affected the feeling that freedom of religion is being restricted and suppressing the more radical positions, thus risking an explosion instead of keeping the situation under control."

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