04 August 2011

In the Burqa Ban, Italy's Left and Right Find Something to Agree On

.... the bill's main sponsor is a naturalized Moroccan immigrant, a Muslim woman who runs an association of Moroccan women and edits an Arabic-language newspaper.

Souad Sbai is a member of Silvio Berlusconi's party and a former member of the National Alliance, a party with fascist roots that in Italy's topsy-turvy political system has become one of the country's main champions of immigrant rights. she is also championing a measure that would ease the path to citizenship for second-generation immigrants.

Sbai says she proposed the veil ban as a response to what she says is a rising wave of extremism in Italy's Islamic community: "I feel humiliated having to talk about burqas. I never saw burqas [as a child in Morocco]. Why do I see them here?" [TIME.com] Read more