Italy’s interior minister brushed off the possibility of his government helping Milan’s muslim community replace a mosque that was recently closed to keep the “public order” on the pretext that it was too small for the crowds who gathered there to pray.

“I’m an interior minister, not a mosque builder,” Roberto Maroni told reporters on Sunday. A member of the xenophobic Northern League Party, Maroni said that he solved the “problem” by closing the mosque.

Following the recent closing of Milan’s biggest mosque, Milan’s Christian archbishop Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi called for more tolerance from the city’s municipal government toward the Muslim community.

“Milan’s civic institutions must guarantee everybody the freedom of religion and the right to worship,” Tettamanzi told Italian newspaper La Repubblica in an interview published on Saturday.
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