This is despite Italy being known for having some of Europe’s strictest rules on covering up in public, with regular reports of outrage over nudity and revealing swimwear.
“We are working on the construction of an appropriate measure that prohibits bathing in the sea clothed, wearing a burkini or otherwise covered.
“We are serious people, by October I will be ready with a measure,” Mayor Anna Maria Cisint, a member of the anti-migrant Northern League party, said.
Saying she was against a “return to the Middle Ages”, Cisint has already written an open letter to the Muslim community inviting them not to bathe with their clothes on.
“The behaviour of Muslim foreigners who habitually enter the water with their clothes on is unacceptable,” she wrote in the letter delivered on Wednesday.
She claimed bathing while covered up was causing “bewilderment” among other visitors at the nearby Marina Julia beach, and suggested that doing so was “dubious” in terms of “decorum and hygiene”.
Cisint added that “forms of ‘Islamisation’ of our territory cannot be accepted”.
President of the Union of Islamic Communities of Italy, Yassine Lafram, said women in Italy can dress however they want but that this does not apply to Muslims, well, at least according to Cisint.
Responding to the letter, she said there will almost certainly be a legal battle over any provision issued, “because it would be unconstitutional”, she said.
“If it were a group of blonde and blue-eyed Finns arriving in wetsuits at the beach of Monfalcone, would this represent a problem for decorum? I think not.”
The topic has long been discussed in neighbouring France, but in Italy it has largely been put to bed due to politicians back in 2016 saying the country would not be following France in attempting to ban the wearing of the burkini in public places.
France has for years been divided over the issue, with supporters of ‘burkini bans’ seeing the swimwear as a symbol of creeping Islamisation.
On Sunday, in a beach club and bathing establishment in Trieste, there were protests because a group of Muslim women wanted to bathe with their clothes on.
ANSA
