A group of Muslims who prayed in front of the Colosseum during a protest march against the Israeli offensive in Gaza this weekend was accused of threatening behaviour by centre-right politicians on Monday.
Around 50 Muslims knelt with their backs to the Roman amphitheatre and prayed towards Mecca during the march on Saturday, refueling a row over a similar incident that took place in front of Milan's Duomo earlier this month, also during a Gaza protest.
''The pseudo-prayers in Milan and in front of the Colosseum are nothing to do with religion - they are threatening and intimidatory acts towards the Italian people,'' said Maurizio Gasparri, Senate whip for Premier Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party.
''Those who take part should be identified by the police and possibly expelled from our country. People mustn't use prayer as a political weapon''.
A former interior minister, the PDL's Beppe Pisanu, described the incidents in Milan and Rome as ''a fundamentalist operation, the preliminaries of terrorism''.
Hundreds of Muslims took part in prayers in front of Milan's Duomo at the beginning of the month, angering politicians from the right-wing Northern League.
Attilio Fontana, mayor of nearby Varese, said at the time he ''would like to see what would happen if I went to recite the rosary in Mecca'', while Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa staged a Catholic mass in Piazza Duomo the following Sunday in order to ''reclaim'' the area.
The head of the Association of Moroccan Women in Italy, PDL MP Souad Sbai, described the Muslims' act as ''a provocative demonstration against the West, Christians and moderate Muslims organised by extremist groups''.
But Milan Archbishop Dionigi Tettamanzi refused to condemn the mass pray-in, describing prayer as an ''inalienable right''.
FINI CALLS FOR IMAMS TO USE ITALIAN.
Concerns over extremism nevertheless led House Speaker Gianfranco Fini to call for imams in Italian mosques to preach in Italian rather than Arabic for greater transparency.
''Everyone knows that the Koran is read in Arabic but it is indispensable that the sermon and commentary should be in Italian,'' Fini said on Monday, returning from an official visit to the United Arab Emirates.
Fini said he had discussed the issue with the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who supports the theory.
Moderate Islamic groups in Italy backed Fini's call.
The Italian Islamic Religious Community (Coreis) said it would be ''preferable'' for sermons to be in Italian ''for reasons of transparency that can no longer be ignored'' but also for second-generation Muslims in Italy with limited knowledge of Arabic.
The association said sermons at the Milan mosque were already held in Italian.
Muslim academic Fouad Allam, who writes for Vatican daily Osservatore Romano, said sermons being given in the language of the host country was ''not new and not forbidden by doctrine''.
''In countries like Indonesia or Iran, preaching on Fridays is always in the local language, even though the Koran may not be translated,'' he said.
The proposal came under fire from some opposition politicians including Enrico Farinone of the Democratic Party, who said forcing imams to use Italian could ''provoke a sense of rejection'' and damage immigrant integration as well as being difficult to regulate.
Communist Refoundation Party leader Paolo Ferrero said the issue was irrelevant for as long as Italian authorities continued to delay building new mosques in the country.
''To discuss what language people should pray in in the mosques we need to actually build them. Instead we are in an absurd situation where Muslims are often obliged to pray in basements and on the street''.
