From the Australian:
Italy has banned Islamic burqas under tough terrorism laws that provide two-year jail terms and E2000 ($3200) fines for anyone caught covering their face in a public place.
The counter-terrorism package, passed by Italy’s parliament yesterday, doubles the existing penalty for wearing a burqa or chador—traditional robes worn by Muslim women to cover their faces—or full-faced helmets or balaclavas in public.
Police can extract DNA samples without a suspect’s consent, detain them for 24 hours without a lawyer present, and deport foreigners suspected of terrorism under the new legislation. Soldiers involved in counter-terrorism have been given the same stop-and-search powers.
The changes, approved in a rare show of bipartisanship, came as Italian police arrested a fugitive hunted by British police over the bungled bombing attempt in London on July 21.
“In the course of the investigation, it has been possible to identify a dense network of individuals from the Eritrean and Ethiopian communities in Italy, believed to have helped the fugitive cover his tracks,” Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu told the Senate. “We have before us a grave threat that has to be confronted with all the means of prevention and contrast that we have.”
This is hardly a tactical surprise—after all, Italy is a target-rich environment, filled with buses and markets and narrow streets leading into open and heavily-trafficked piazzas—but I’ll admit to being a bit stunned watching Western Europe (whose media has, on the whole, spent the last several years blasting the US for housing murderous jihadis in a state-of-the-art detention center, glove-handling their holy books and feeding them culturally-correct meals) reacting so swiftly and forcefully to the London bombings. Or, as the French would have it, following their lead.
Either way, I think it’s fair to say that reality, in the form of decapitated British double deckers and twisted metal subway cars buried beneath Kings Cross station, is raining like shrapnel over immigration-happy Old Europe, which is finally beginning to look around and realize that those unassimilated Muslim communities entrenched in their cities pose more of a threat than that hamfisted Republican cowboy in the White House.
Ironically, there’s no way in hell we’d be able to adopt a similar measure here in the US—we had enough trouble, legally-speaking, getting a Florida woman to lift her burqua for a driver’s license photo—and I think we’re better for it, ultimately. This is, after all, the ultimate in active profiling, and while I strongly support criminal profiling based on age and ethnicity, I’d find this measure draconian were someone to suggest we implement it here in the states.
Then again, our Muslim population is far better integrated than those in Europe, where “multiculturalism” has been an article of faith—and Europeans are simply reacting to having their eyes opened to the subsidized radicalism that’s been gathering strength and numbers in their midst.
My discomfort with this measure aside, I think it important that we do make it clear that while we respect religious differences, our tolerance extends only so far, and that we will actively seek to begin shutting down Wahhabi mosques and Islamic centers that preach anti-US, anti-Western hatred and jihad.
****
update: “NYC Pol: Use Racial Profiling on Subways”
ick. what a bunch of fascists those italians are.
Hey, they invented it.
Freedom Pasta!
This is just like France banning headscarves, yamulkes and “large crosses” in schools. Limiting the freedom of movement of Muslim women and girls doesn’t help matters at all.
But all Western countries should discreetly police their mosques, and crack down on those that preach violence.
I would love it if they could shut down all the Wahhabi mosques period- but under what banner? How could such a thing be accomplished. I can already see the ACLU defending ‘em -made all the more ironic because they would NEVER defend a Christian church.
But are you absolutely certain that “our” muslims are better integrated than those in Europe? Since it is said 80% of the US mosques are Saudi funded and controlled, I question your definitive statement.
Old Europe was never “immigration-happy”. The Old European elites were amused by their cultural experimenting. The, um, non-elites were apathetic as long as they had a job, their seven weeks of vacation was intact, and TV kept them happily ignorant of what the elites were up to (which is why anti-Americanism is so necessary).
Madrid, Amsterdam, London et al were like loud parties that spilled into the streets and are starting to wake-up the neighborhood. The “neighbors” are not happy, so the elites, without so much as a word of apology, have started to act. For real.
The elites are thinking that if they’re lucky, they’ll hammer a few muslims, make a few new laws, and things will get back to normal. I think tho’, that the worms are out of the can and things are going to get uglier before they get better.
> But are you absolutely certain that “our†muslims
> are better integrated than those in Europe?
Yes; however, there are localized exceptions (many of the various Somali communities, for exmaple).
But did you have to use that title for the post? My mental 45 rpm record player stylus will be skipping at “…midnight fantasy…” for the rest of the day.
Hmmm. For me it was the other way around. I woke up with the song in my head, then set out to find something I could post on that would make sense with the song title.
Just heard a quote from a London police official on Fox. He said, “Well, of course there will be some profiling. We’re not going to waste our time searching old white women.”
Why can’t we get the message over here?
I spent some time in Italy in 1992 and 1995, and soldiers with machine guns discreetly watched the goings-on in every piazza in Rome and Florence. In every city Italians held protest marches against illegal (mostly Muslim) immigration. So, they have spent 10-15 years dilly-dallying with a problem that started out at our level and has now ripened.
I live in an area that has already produced two terrorists: Hadayet and Adam Ghadan. The fact that no arrests have been made doesn’t mean that something bad is not going on here. Lgf periodically notes the radical ramblings of the county’s esteemed imam, completely ignored by the media. Give us another 10-15 years of PC-ness, and we’ll be just like ITaly.