A sports club in Mestre, a suburb of Venice, is banning men from the pool and offering women-only sessions only as part of an experiment to integrate the Muslim community.
For the next three Sundays, the pool at Polisportiva Bissuola di Mestre will be open only to women and their children between 9am and 10.30am, the Veneto edition of Corriere reported on Thursday.
The move, launched in coordination with the Italian Union of Sports for All (Usip), is “an opportunity to promote integration and raise awareness of women from different backgrounds,” Ugo Di Mauro, the president of the Bissuola sports club, was quoted as saying in Corriere.
If successful, the initiative will be extended, he added.
Di Mauro was inspired to follow in the footsteps of a Turin sports club, which adopted the initiative and saw a 50 percent increase in the number of women using the pool.
“There was real integration, and it was an important opportunity to pave the way towards opening up links and expanding knowledge; we hope the same thing happens here.”
More than 1.5 million Muslims live in Italy, according to figures from the Pew Research Centre, making them Italy’s second-largest religious group.
Despite this, Islam is not an officially recognized religion, making it difficult for Muslims organizations to get funding through the Italian law that allows taxpayers to allocate part of their taxes to a religious group of their choice.
INTEGRATION THROUGH SEGREGATION?
READ MORE
http://ift.tt/1svAdgz
No comments:
Post a Comment