---
title: "Italy Bans a Garment Its Teachers Say They Have Never Seen in a Classroom"
description: "Meloni’s decree bars burqas and niqabs in schools and caps non-Italian-speaking pupils — a ban in search of a problem, Muslims say"
author: "Nate Ledger"
published: 2026-09-29T08:11:27Z
modified: 2026-09-29T10:33:30Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/italy-bans-a-garment-its-teachers-say-they-have-never-seen-i-8d681b
language: en
tags: ["burqa", "meloni", "immigration", "religion", "politics", "europe"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Italy Bans a Garment Its Teachers Say They Have Never Seen in a Classroom

*Meloni’s decree bars burqas and niqabs in schools and caps non-Italian-speaking pupils — a ban in search of a problem, Muslims say*

By Nate Ledger · September 29, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/italy-bans-a-garment-its-teachers-say-they-have-never-seen-i-8d681b

## In brief

- Worshippers at Milan’s al-Wahid mosque questioned the ban; a teacher said she had never seen face coverings at school
- Meloni announced the plan on September 20 at a Brothers of Italy youth event; cabinet adopted the decree-law on Thursday
- The decree bans burqas and niqabs in schools and caps non-Italian-speaking pupils at 30% per classroom from next year
- As a decree-law it takes effect immediately but parliament must ratify it within 60 days
- Immigration is expected to be a central issue in next year’s elections, with Meloni facing a far-right challenger

There is a particular genre of legislation in which the first step in evaluating the law is trying to work out whether the thing it prohibits actually happens. Italy’s government has just produced a fine example.

At Milan’s al-Wahid mosque, in a quiet inner courtyard off the busy Navigli district, worshippers at Friday prayers were, Al Jazeera reports, perplexed by the government’s decision to ban the burqa and niqab in schools. Mulayka Laura Enriello, a 58-year-old high school maths teacher, told the outlet that while some schoolgirls wear a headscarf, she had never in her career seen a student in a face-covering garment. The ban, she said, raises “a false problem”, focusing attention on a garment worn by a tiny minority — and, in her view, politicians forget there are humans behind the rhetoric.

Here is the mechanism of the policy. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni first outlined the measures on Sunday, September 20, at a gathering of the youth wing of her Brothers of Italy party, according to [the Associated Press](https://apnews.com/article/italy-meloni-ban-burqas-niqabs-ban-schools-862c88cc1aa98560ba2b3f7bf31ae622) and [Euronews](https://www.euronews.com/2026/09/20/meloni-announces-ban-on-burqa-and-niqab-in-italian-schools-and-cap-on-foreign-students). On Thursday, her cabinet adopted a decree-law making it illegal to wear burqas and niqabs in schools and introducing a 30% cap on the number of non-Italian-speaking pupils in any one classroom from next year, [Al Jazeera reported](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/25/meloni-government-bans-burqas-caps-foreign-students-in-italian-schools). Because it is a decree-law, it takes effect immediately, though parliament must ratify it within 60 days, [per the BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw99d8g48873o).

Now, the classroom cap and the face-covering ban are presented as a package, but they have rather different relationships with reality. Whether or not you think a 30% cap is good policy, non-Italian-speaking pupils are a measurable population that schools demonstrably have. Face coverings in Italian schools, by the account of a teacher with decades in the classroom, are a population of approximately zero. You do not need to ban something nobody does. Banning it costs nothing and changes nothing, which is of course precisely the attraction: it is a statement, purchasable at the price of a press release, aimed at voters rather than at school corridors.

And the timing tells you who the statement is for. Al Jazeera notes that immigration is expected to be a central issue in next year’s elections, and that Meloni announced the measures while fending off a challenger on her right flank. The audience for a burqa ban is not the schoolgirl who does not wear a burqa; it is the voter who might otherwise drift to a more explicitly anti-migrant party. If you are a government trying to hold that voter, a symbolic ban on a largely hypothetical garment is a bargain. If you are one of Italy’s Muslims, it is a message about your place in the country, delivered through your children’s school, about a problem your own community says does not exist.

The decree now goes to parliament, which has 60 days to ratify it or let it lapse. The burqas, meanwhile, remain as scarce in Italian classrooms as they were before.