'Islam and Europe have compatibility problem': Italy PM Meloni's 2018 video surfaces on social media

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s five-year-old video has surfaced on social media in which she is heard saying that Islamic culture and the values and rights of European civilisation have a “compatibility problem”. The video, from 2018 before she became the Prime Minister of Italy, surfaced a day after an event was organised in Rome on Saturday by her right-wing, ultra-conservative Brothers of Italy party. The event was also attended by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and billionaire Elon Musk.

" I believe… there is a problem of compatibility between Islamic culture or a certain interpretation of Islamic culture and the rights and values of our civilization… Will not allow Sharia law to be implemented in Italy….," she is heard saying in the video. Criticising Saudi Arabia’s rigid Sharia law under which apostasy and homosexuality are criminal offences, she said that most of the Islamic cultural centres in Italy are financed by the Islamic country. “Saudi Arabia is a nation that at home applies Sharia and Sharia means lapidation for adultery, death penalty for apostasy, death penalty for homo sexuality. I believe that these issues should be raised, which does not mean generalizing on Islam, it means raising the problem that there is a process of Islamization in Europe, that is very distant from the values of our civilization,” said the Italian PM in the video. Sharia law, commonly referred to as Islamic law, constitutes a set of principles and regulations rooted in the Quran and the Hadith, representing the foundational religious texts of Islam. With inputs from agencies