Italy has approved a decree-law banning face coverings in schools and capping the percentage of non-Italian students or pupils with low Italian language proficiency at 30 percent in the first year of primary, middle, and high school.
The decree-law, passed by Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s cabinet of ministers on September 24, takes effect immediately but must be ratified by parliament within 60 days. Lawbreakers wearing face veils to school face fines of €200 to €1,000.
You must go to school with your face uncovered, and in Italy no one, in the name of a real or supposed tradition, can decide that a young woman must hide herself.
“You must go to school with your face uncovered, and in Italy no one, in the name of a real or supposed tradition, can decide that a young woman must hide herself,” Meloni told an annual youth gathering of her Fratelli D’Italia party.
The new law “also requires parents of foreign students facing serious difficulties integrating into the school system to learn Italian and bans burqas and niqabs in schools,” Meloni said, explicitly identifying the Islamic face coverings in her speech.
“These are common-sense rules—rules that clearly serve a safety purpose,” the Prime Minister told Rai 1 TV. “Similar measures prohibiting people from appearing at school, university, or even in public offices with their faces covered already exist across Europe and even in several Muslim-majority countries, precisely for security reasons.”
Meloni said she prided herself on defending women’s rights, remarking: “I find it rather odd that the very people who accuse us of not doing enough for women’s rights … fail to see that this measure actually addresses the issue of women’s rights.”
According to school sector estimates, Muslims represent around one-third of foreign students, or about 350,000 students nationwide. In over 1,000 Italian schools (750 in comprehensive schools and 250 in secondary schools), Muslim pupils exceed 30% of classroom capacity.
Amnesty International Opposes Law, Top Imams Support Ban
Amnesty International condemned the new measure as “discriminatory” and constituting “a direct threat to the freedoms of expression and religion of students attending Italian schools,” and “a violation of the right to education enshrined in Article 34 of the Constitution.”
The left-wing President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, attacked Meloni’s school cap as “unthinkable.” “Calling all this integration is another lie, a convenient lie for those who live off ideology, for those who lecture us from the living rooms and then send their children to schools where this problem doesn’t exist,” he warned.
But the president of the Conference of European Imams, Imam Hassen Chalghoumi, supported the law, arguing that the niqab “undermines the role and dignity of Muslim women” and stressing that the full veil does not represent the true values of Islam, but diminishes women’s dignity and hinders their social and educational integration.
Imam Nader Akkad, advisor for religious affairs of the Great Mosque of Rome, reiterated that the burqa and the niqab are not Qur’anic precepts but that the recommended form of the veil is the “Marian model,” which leaves the face uncovered. Akkad explained that the burqa and niqab are expressions of cultural customs linked to specific geographical regions.
“The two measures, intended to promote integration in schools through learning Italian and respecting shared rules, deserve separate consideration. In my view, both are more symbolic than truly effective,” Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, founder-president of the Transatlantic Institute for the Study of Contemporary Ideologies, told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI).
“Banning the burqa and niqab will not prevent wearing the hijab, which covers the hair and neck while leaving the face visible. Focusing the debate solely on whether the face is visible fails to address the broader issues raised in France, for instance: equality between girls and boys, and early indoctrination when religious standards of modesty are imposed on girls,” she explained.
“Capping the number of foreign pupils raises a different question. Promoting language learning and preventing segregation in schools are legitimate objectives, but nationality remains a limited criterion. Segregation can also occur along ethnic, cultural and religious lines that this criterion fails to capture,” Bergeaud-Blackler added.
In 2021, Italians were shocked to learn that a 14-year-old Muslim girl originally from Bangladesh and living in Ostia, on the Roman coast, was regularly beaten by her mother and her 17-year-old brother for refusing to wear the burqa.
“They wanted me to wear a burqa, but I refused,” the teenager told the police. “My brother slapped me, grabbed me, and threw me against the wall. Then he pushed me again, and I hit my head on a piece of furniture.” She also complained that she was being forced into marriage.
Islamists Reject Burqa Ban
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a controversial US Islamist organization, condemned the ban as “an obvious attempt to target and marginalize the Muslim community.”
Imam Yahya Pallavicini, vice president of the Italian Islamic Religious Community (COREIS), called the ban a “false problem” and “intellectual dishonesty” aimed at a small minority and noted that it “presents a unified model of society” that is “white supremacist.”
Imam Ali Abu Shwaima, who heads Lombardy’s largest mosque, dismissed the ban as “just manipulation,” remarking that he has “never seen a girl in a burqa at school.” He urged the Meloni government to “respect the Constitution” after President Sergio Mattarella’s remarks.
However, Mattarella has emphasized the constitutional value of inclusive and open schools, calling for the avoidance of obstacles and barriers that could limit access or educational progress, in a diplomatic rebuke to Meloni, but has not criticized the burqa ban.
Burqa Bans Spreading Across Europe
Italy’s burqa ban in schools follows Portugal’s ban on full-face coverings in public spaces on September 23, 2026. Violating the ban carries fines ranging from €150 to €3,000. Anyone coercing another person to cover their face faces a prison sentence of up to two years, which increases if the victim is a minor.
While the Socialist Party denounced the “Islamophobic purpose” of the bill, the Portuguese Communist Party said the law had “nothing to do with women’s rights, nor with security issues,” but is “solely about fuelling hate speech and violence against those who are different, fuelling racist and xenophobic discourse.”
Legal justification for burqa bans in Europe has shifted from security concerns, which shied from challenging Islamic dress, to an explicit mention of Islamic customs in the legislation.
In April 2011, France became the first European country to impose a ban on face coverings. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upheld the ban in July 2014 after a Muslim woman challenged it. The precedent has emboldened other European nations to consider anti-burqa legislation without fear of being accused of Islamophobia.
The ECHR ruled that the ban “was not expressly based on the religious connotation of the clothing in question.” It considered “the state’s submission that the face played a significant role in social interaction.” It based its ruling on the concept of “living together,” stating this new understanding allowed limitations on certain rights, such as freedom of religion.
Belgium banned face covering in public spaces in July 2011, with fines and prison sentences for violations. In December 2012, the Belgian Constitutional Court upheld the ban, ruling it did not violate fundamental rights or freedom of religion.
Two Muslim women who wanted to wear the full niqab challenged the ruling in the ECHR. In 2017, the ECHR ruled that banning face veils does not violate the European Convention on Human Rights. The court drew on its 2014 precedent, arguing that the ban sought to guarantee the concept of “living together” and the “protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
Bulgaria banned the full-face veil in state, administrative, and educational institutions starting in September 2016. Austria’s anti-mask law of October 2017 requires facial features to be fully visible in public spaces. In September 2026, Austria banned girls under 14 from wearing a headscarf to school that “covers the head in accordance with Islamic tradition.”
While Denmark introduced a nationwide burqa ban in August 2018, the Netherlands opted for a partial ban in August 2019, and Switzerland ratified a federal burqa ban in public spaces after a national referendum and legislation that came into force in 2023.
