Reflecting growing anti-Muslim sentiments in Italy, a Muslim man dressed in traditional Islamic garb walked in the streets of Milan carrying the holy Qur'an only to come under abuse all through his way.
"This social experiment was to check the tolerance of Milan's citizens towards Muslims or someone who is dressed as an Imam," Hamdy Mahisen, an Egyptian student, told La Republica.
As a part of the experiment, the thirty-year-old Mahisen walked in the streets of the northern city for five hours while wearing the traditional Islamic white robe and cap.
Drawing both stares and insults by the passersby, Mahisen was branded "Taliban and "ISIS" by the public.
"S***, have you seen the Isis?" someone could be heard saying in a video recorded by a hidden camera.
A man standing near Mahisen at a tramstop made the remark: "Look, he has got the Koran [Qur'an]. Think he's got a gun under his tunic?"
A person within a small group of young men said: "Guys, you just missed the imam."
A similar experiment was made by earlier this week when Jewish journalist Zvika Klein recorded his experiment of walking through Paris for 10 hours wearing a kippah, or yarmulke.
"I got spit at, cursed and threatened," Klein wrote on Twitter of the experience, the Huffington Post reported.
Italy has been on high alert since the killing of 21 Egyptian Christians by the so-called Islamic State ISIL in the neighboring Libya last week.
Muslim scholars across the world have vehemently condemned the heinous crime saying that it is against the Islamic teachings and worsens the situation in the region.
The crime was aggravated by the wrong claims that it is sanctioned by Islam, the religion of mercy.
Italy has a Muslim population of some 1.7 million, including 20,000 reverts, according to the figures released by Istat, the national statistics agency.
Reacting to increasing attacks targeting veiled Muslim students, the headmaster of an Italian college in north-eastern Italian town Cervignano del Friuli has banned last week headscarves in classes, seeing them as "provocative".
The decision followed several attacks against Muslim students in the college for donning hijab.
source : www.abna.ir
