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Milan, Italy – Worshippers gathering for Friday prayers at the al-Wahid mosque in Milan’s Navigli district responded with bewilderment to the Italian government’s newly announced prohibition on full-face coverings in schools. The measure, unveiled by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during a rally of her Brothers of Italy party, has reignited a long-simmering debate over religious expression, national identity, and the direction of Italian politics. For many in Italy’s small Muslim community, however, the policy addresses a phenomenon that barely exists in the country’s classrooms.
Mulayka Laura Enriello, a 58-year-old high school mathematics teacher, said she has never encountered a student wearing a face-covering garment during her entire career. While some girls choose to wear a headscarf, she explained, neither teachers nor classmates interfere with that decision. Enriello described the proposal as lacking in basic humanity, arguing that if a girl arrived at school wearing a burqa, the appropriate response would be to treat her as a minor who believes she is acting rightly, not to send her away.
The prime minister framed the ban as a step toward gender equality, declaring that students must attend school with their faces visible and that no one in Italy can decide, in the name of real or supposed tradition, that a young woman should conceal herself. According to the state-run Ansa news agency, only around 500 to 600 female students across the country currently wear a full-face covering, a figure so small that critics say it cannot justify a national decree.
Yahya Pallavicini, the mosque’s imam and vice president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community, characterized the ban as a response to a fabricated problem. In his view, the government is using a garment worn by a tiny minority to distort public perceptions of Islam and to promote a homogeneous social model that marginalizes anyone who differs from the majority. He accused officials of intellectual dishonesty, suggesting that the burqa is being invoked to caricature a segment of Muslim society that some find uncomfortable.
The political symbolism of the veil extends beyond Italy’s borders. Female activists from the French far-right group Collectif Nemesis staged a theatrical protest at the annual rally of Italy’s populist League party in Pontida, removing full-face coverings on stage while the crowd shouted “liberta,” or freedom. Renata Pepicelli, a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Pisa, compared the spectacle to the actions of French colonial authorities in Algeria in 1958, when groups of Algerian women removed and burned their veils, sometimes under coercion, as a display of allegiance to Paris.
Pepicelli argued that the veil remains a battlefield and that its removal continues to symbolize social dominance. She linked Meloni’s proposal directly to this broader climate, in which Muslim women’s bodies become instruments for political messaging. The decree itself avoids explicit references to burqas or niqabs, instead prohibiting participation at school with a full-face covering or in any other manner that prevents identification, a formulation that legal scholars say leaves room for interpretation.
Nico Tonti, a researcher in the department of legal studies at the University of Bologna, noted that while the directive has already taken effect, Parliament retains the authority to examine its proportionality relative to its stated aims and its compatibility with religious freedom protections. Italian law has long prohibited wearing items in public that make personal identification difficult, except when there is a valid reason. Tonti explained that this clause has been central to the tension between religious liberty and public order, and that over the years courts have increasingly recognized religious observance as a valid reason exempting individuals from prosecution.
Observers see the timing of the ban as driven by electoral calculation rather than genuine concern for gender equality. With the campaign for the 2027 elections already underway, Meloni faces pressure from her right, where the National Future party of former general Roberto Vannacci has climbed to eight percent in public opinion surveys since its founding in February. The challenge has prompted the prime minister to project a harder line on identity issues that might otherwise be claimed by her rival.
Lorenzo Castellani, a professor of the History of Political Institutions at LUISS University, said Meloni is advancing this legislation to send a strong signal to right-wing voters, for whom security and immigration rank among the top concerns. He predicted that she would base her electoral campaign on three themes: immigration, security, and political stability. The first two allow her to address her base without ceding the identity agenda to Vannacci, while the third distinguishes her as a leader capable of delivering both responsiveness and continuity.
That third theme rests on a remarkable achievement. Meloni leads the longest-lasting government in Italy since World War II, having surpassed Silvio Berlusconi’s record of 1,412 consecutive days in power earlier this month. Castellani suggested she will attempt to convert that stability into electoral capital, linking immigration and security to the promise of sustained governance. Italy is historically known for chronic political turnover, making Meloni’s durability a central plank of her appeal.
For the worshippers at al-Wahid, however, the debate over a garment few Italians ever encounter feels disconnected from daily life. Enriello said politicians overlook the human beings behind their divisive rhetoric, reducing complex questions of faith and adolescence to symbols in a culture war. The measure may serve Meloni’s immediate political needs, but its practical impact on Italian schools appears negligible, and its broader consequences for religious freedom remain uncertain as Parliament prepares to scrutinize a decree that critics say targets a phantom.
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