ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to the varying characteristics of Islam in Italy, including the legal forms of Muslim communities in the country. This will offer a unique insight into specific issues concerning the practical problems of freedom of religion, such as those referring to places of worship, funerals, burials, cemeteries, religion and prison, religious symbols, education, and labour law. This may also assist in understanding how the Italian legal system is dealing with the increasing cultural diversity, in which Islam is not the only component, but it has become one of the main political and legal concerns. Albeit less marked than that of other European states, the increase in the number of Muslims in the peninsula is touching on the raw legal nerve of the principle of secularism, which is fundamental to the functioning and pluralistic Italian constitutional democracy, in the western sense of the term.
