Anti-immigration Northern League Party of Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni is seeking a moratorium on the building of mosques as a preventative measure to future terrorist attacks. The demand for blocking mosque building comes as a reaction to the recent arrest of two men suspected for planning attacks in Milan, Italy's northern financial hub.
La Stampa, a local Italian newspaper quoted Maroni on Thursday stating that "Islamist terrorism" runs deep in Italy and must be stamped out.
"These arrests show that Islamist terrorism is entrenched in Italy, and that we must be vigilant," Maroni told the paper. "Unfortunately it is not easy to distinguish between places of worship and those that recruit terrorists and finance the planning of attacks," he added.
Ally of the conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the Northern League began a motion in the lower house of parliament banning the construction of places of worship for Muslims and cultural centers in Italy. The motion comes as a preliminary step to curb the increasing number of mosques until parliament passes an official law on their establishment. |