'Defend Muslim women from burqas'

(ANSA) - Rome, August 17 - The head of the Conservatives and Reformists caucus in the Senate, Anna Cinzia Bonfrisco, said Wednesday that the country could defeat extremism through "defending Muslim women from oppression and the violence of symbols like the burqa".
    If Italy were to do so, she claimed, Muslim women "will be the ones to annihilate the radicalism that sows terror". Interior Minister Angelino Alfano had told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published Wednesday that the country would not be following in the footsteps of French cities that have banned the burkini, a full-body Islamic swimming garment, in order to avoid attracting attacks from Islamic extremists.
    "Alfano is making a mistake," Bonfrisco said. "Absurd integration policies even at the cost of renouncing our Western culture is the reason why Europe has become a sieve." "France has discovered at its own expense the mistake of the dominant idea in the European left, according to which reception comes before our culture, even of a religious nature." "Those who do not see what female immigrants are forced into - even in our cities - make the tragic mistake of not understanding that if we use firm laws to free female immigrants from female genital mutilation and segregation, they will be the main driver behind the isolation of Islamic radicalism, which they are the main victims of." "Women's rights, so dear to the left, have become subservient to Islam. Woe to us if we follow that model. Even France has understood this," she said.