Italian member of the European Parliament Silvia Sardone, a member of Matteo Salvini’s Lega, has claimed to have been on the receiving end of death threats after she vocally criticised the spread of illegal mosques and the use of the Islamic veil, the hijab, in European Union communications materials.
Claiming she has received dozens of hate messages, Sardone said some had threatened to slit her throat, while others said they would suffocate or stab her to death, the Italian newspaper Secolo d’Italia reports.
“For years I have been receiving threats, increasingly crude and heavy, for my positions on illegal mosques and for my opposition to the Islamic veil. For years I have been reporting them to the competent bodies,” Sardone said.
The Italian MEP went on to add:
I want to be clear: I will continue to express my ideas and opinions in Italy and in the institutions in which I am elected, with my head held high and without fear. I will continue to say that the European Union must not promote the Islamic veil in its communications as an instrument of freedom and integration because I consider it instead an instrument of submission for women. I will continue to fight for the many women who want to be free and not oppressed for religious reasons.
I will continue to denounce the growing Islamization of Europe, the spread of Muslim ghettos and Islamic courts that want to impose sharia. I will continue to point out the worrying retreat in our identity and our culture. I will continue to denounce the danger of abusive Islamic centres on our territory where funding and what is preached are not clear.
I will continue to reiterate that Europe must not give up our values and human rights so as not to offend Islamic communities. These threats, for the umpteenth time, will not bend me. Faced with an Islam that is taking space in Europe, opposing it is more than ever a duty.
Sardoine is a well-known critic of Islam in Italy, particularly in her home city of Milan, where she has previously spoken out against illegal mosques.
In 2020, Sardone was subjected to rape and death threats, including threats to set her on fire, after she came out in opposition to a proposal to create a temporary mosque in the Via Novara area of the city.
“It will not be these threats of rape or death that will stop me from denouncing the [Democratic Party’s] submission to certain Islamic communities and the risks to the city,” she said at the time, slamming the left-wing Democrats and Milan Mayor Beppe Sala, who is also a member of the leftist party.
Earlier this year, Sardone criticised the Milan government over its announcement that it would be clearing out an illegal squat of migrants to make way for a new mosque project, noting that locals in the area had been trying to get the government to act for years without response.
“As can be seen from the answer given to me by deputy mayor Scavuzzo, the municipality is in no hurry to clear out the former public toilets in Via Esterle illegally occupied by dozens of illegal African immigrants for the past six years,” she said.
“It will do so only to make room for the House of Muslim Culture, which has been awarded those spaces to build a large mosque. The Muslims ask and the municipality does it,” Sardine said, concluding by stating, “for the left, Italians count less than Muslim communities to whom everything is granted.”
While Sardone has expressed criticism of the hijab, the UK city of Birmingham is set to celebrate the Islamic veil with a new sculpture set to be installed in the Smethwick area in October.
The five-metre-high work is dedicated to women who wear the hijab and is the first of its kind in the United Kingdom.
“The Strength of the Hijab is a piece which represents women who wear hijabs of the Islamic faith, and it’s really there because it’s such an underrepresented part of our community, but such an important one,” sculptor Luke Perry said.
“They need visibility, it’s so important, so working with the community to come up with the designs has been really exciting because we didn’t know what it was going to look like until now. The location of where it’s going is Smethwick, [where] there’s a humongous part of the community that is from the Islamic faith. They wear the hijab as part of their community, and it is really underrepresented,” he added.
