(Local) Italy is known for having some of Europe’s stricter rules on covering up in public, with regular reports of outrage over nudity and revealing swimwear.
But on Wednesday, one politician from the nationalist League party in northern Italy sparked controversy by suggesting that Muslim beachgoers were instead covering themselves up too much.
“The behaviour of Muslim foreigners who habitually enter the water with their clothes on is unacceptable,” the mayor of Monfalcone in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, Anna Maria Cisint, wrote in an open letter to the local Muslim community on Wednesday.
Bathing while covered up was causing “bewilderment” among other visitors at the nearby Marina Julia beach, she claimed, before suggesting that doing so was “dubious” in terms of “decorum and hygiene.”
