A row has blown up in a small Tuscan village over council plans to set aside tombs for Muslims in the local cemetery.
The council of Rigutino voted last month in favour of reserving ten graves in the village cemetery for Muslim immigrants from the neighbouring city of Arezzo.
The graves would be dug in such a way that the faces of the deceased would be turned towards Islam's holiest city Mecca, in accordance with Muslim tradition.
The measure would also allow the dead Muslims to be buried directly in the ground without a casket.
The Rigutino cemetery and another in the nearby village of San Leo are apparently the only two left in the province which have space for the Muslim dead.
But the idea has upset a large number of local villagers, who say it unfairly favours the Muslim community by according them reserved spots in the cemetery which they would not otherwise be entitled to as village 'outsiders'.
The villagers have set up a committee to fight the measure.
A petition organised by the committee has already been signed by 500 people and the protesters have also appealed to the local bishop to intervene.
It was the second such religious dispute in as many days in Italy.
On Wednesday, local and national politicians were in uproar after reports that a Milan hospital was planning to replace its traditional wall crucifixes with images of the Madonna in order not to offend non-Catholic patients.
The La Repubblica daily was the first to report that the Mangiagalli Policlinico, one of Italy's leading pregnancy and childbirth clinics, was aiming to gradually phase out its crosses and substitute them with images of the Madonna and Child.
The foundation which runs the clinic subsequently sought to quell the storm, saying that no crucifixes had been or would be removed.
