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Italian town in turmoil after far-right mayor bans Muslim prayers
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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Bigotry aside, that seems like a wildly unenforceable law: What are they going to do? Go house to house to make sure people aren't praying the wrong way?
I mean, bigotry and unenforceability aside, it's also pretty unambiguously illegal.
Italy is a signatory to the ECHR which creates an explicit right to privacy (Article 8) and freedom of religion (Article 9).
The Italian constitution itself also specifies a right to religious equality before the law (Article 8).
Yeah that was gonna be my question: does Italy not have any legal mechanism in place that would be the functional equivalent of the US's supremacy clause?
Like...not saying shit like this isn't attempted all the time in deeply conservative areas of the US, but in most cases where the far right leadership has even a shred of strategic thinking, they often don't even attempt to pass or enforce laws like this because it'll trigger immediate challenge in the courts, the challenge will be 100% taken up and the decision will come down against them (since even in a conservative court, the only thing they hate more than ruling in favor of "liberal" causes is any ruling that would limit the court's power in the future), and at that point there's a permanent legal precedent in the books, against the repression they'd like to carry out.
That’s exactly the same in Italy, freedom of religion is constitutionally protected. So either there’s something the article is not reporting, ie they are forbidding praying on the pavements of the street blocking the pedestrian circulation (which I promise you does happen), or the ban will simply be vetoed by the court.
Normally these things are about the call to prayer, not the actual praying. This does seem to be being reported as the actual praying though.
Public praying in areas which cause obstruction could potentially be justified under the public safety exception of the ECHR.
If only there was a way to find out.
Not defending this at all, but the ban only covers praying at "cultural centers", which I assume doesn't include people's private residences.
They truly could enforce against public Islamic worship illegal, depending on how broadly "cultural centers" is defined, and I expect fascists to define it to cover all of public life.
Still sounds unenforceable and, while I'm not familiar with Italy's legal system, probably illegal.
Muslims often have massive group prayer, it's about outlying public participation for one specific religious group.
The thing is that these group prayers can be conducted literally anywhere as long as it’s clean, so this law literally does nothing except openly expressing hate