Italian PM sparks row with remarks on Islam

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has sparked an issue by addressing what she sees as a compatibility problem between Islam and Europe. Talking at her right-wing occasion’s occasion, the firebrand Italian chief touched upon the difficulty of Saudi-backed Islamic cultural centres in Italy.

“I imagine there’s a drawback of compatibility between Islamic tradition or a sure interpretation of Islamic tradition and the rights and values of our civilisation,” she mentioned, in keeping with movies making rounds on the Web. “It doesn’t escape my thoughts that a lot of the Islamic cultural centres in Italy are financed by Saudi Arabia.”

Meloni additionally spoke on the difficulty of “lapidation for adultery” and “the dying penalty for apostasy and homosexuality.” “I imagine that these must be raised, which doesn’t imply generalising on Islam. It means elevating the issue that there’s a strategy of Islamisation in Europe that could be very distant from the values of our civilisation,” she mentioned.

These sharp feedback come because the leaders of Italy and the UK agreed on Saturday to sort out irregular migration to Europe, pledging to accentuate cooperation within the struggle in opposition to human trafficking. Meloni and Sunak, who held talks in Rome, have been additionally joined by Albanian counterpart Edi Rama, who’s seen as a key ally within the efforts to handle migrant arrivals from North Africa to European shores.

Meloni’s workplace mentioned in an announcement after the assembly that the talks with Sunak “targeted totally on the joint work within the discipline of migration inside the framework of the Memorandum of Understanding signed in London” in April. The 2 leaders reportedly agreed to co-fund a primary Italian-British undertaking of assisted voluntary repatriations to international locations of origin drawn up by the Worldwide Group for Migration for migrants stranded in Tunisia.

Meloni, Sunak and Rama agreed on the necessity to handle irregular migration “in an more and more structured method, additional intensifying cooperation between the three international locations to struggle human trafficking,” the assertion mentioned. The talks additionally touched on different points, together with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and “the disaster within the Center East,” it added. In current months, Sunak has developed a robust partnership with Meloni, and has sought to win help from different European leaders to assist crack down on migration, with each Albania and Italy seen as essential companions.