Another Vatican expert on immigration, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, said it was important in the course of dialogue with Muslims to make them understand that the consequences of some of their religious traditions might not be positive in the societies in which they now find themselves.

The Italian government is trying to draw up what it calls a Charter of Common Values to get local Muslim leaders to help integrate Italy’s fast-growing population. But it is hard going.

At one recent meeting, a radical Muslim delegate proposed separate charters for men and for women, and favoured the death penalty.

Equal rights for men and women are guaranteed, and the death penalty is banned, under the Italian constitution.

<B>Why Muslim women wear the veil </B>

The Koran, Islam’s holy book and treated as the literal word of God, tells Muslims – men and women – to dress modestly.

Male modesty has been interpreted to be covering the area from the navel to the knee - and for women it is generally seen as covering everything except their face, hands and feet when in the presence of men they are not related or married to. However, there has been much debate among Islamic scholars as to whether this goes far enough. This has led to a distinction between the hijab (literally “covering up” in Arabic) and the niqab (meaning “full veil”). Hijab is a common sight among Muslim women, a scarf that covers their hair and neck. Niqab consists of covering up completely, including gloves and a veil for the face – leaving just a slit for the eyes, or covering them too with transparent material. This form of dress is rarer, although it has been growing in recent years, and it is this which former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says he objects to at face-to-face meetings with his constituents. Muslim scholars have debated whether it is obligatory to don the niqab, or whether it is just recommended without being obligatory. There have also been more liberal interpretations which say the headscarf is unnecessary, as long as women maintain the sartorial modesty stipulated in the Koran. Scholarly dispute The holy text addresses “the faithful women” who are told to shield their private parts and not to display their adornment “except what is apparent of it”. Scholarly disputes revolve around what this last phrase means. Does it refer to the outer surface of a woman’s garments, necessitating that she cover every part of her body? Or does it give an exemption referring to the face and the hands, as well as conventional female ornaments such as kohl, rings, bracelets and make-up? There are additional Koranic instructions – seen as ambiguous and therefore much debated - for women to draw the “khimar” (or scarf) to cover the “jayb” (or bosom/upper chest), and for “the wives and daughters of the Prophet and the women of the believers to draw their “jalabib” (or cloaks) close round them”. Religious and cultural traditions vary across the Muslim world, stretching from Indonesia to Morocco. But it may also be left to the Muslim woman to decide for herself, whether she wants to cover up fully with the niqab, as an expression of her faith and Islamic identity, or not.

<B>Pope to hold summit on married priests</B>

■ Pope Benedict XVI has called a meeting today with top Vatican officials to discuss lifting the celibacy requirement for priests seeking to marry or who have already married. Benedict called the summit to examine the implications of the “disobedience” of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo, the Zambian prelate excommunicated in September for installing four married American men as bishops, the Vatican said recently. The Vatican stressed the meeting would not open a general discussion of the celibacy requirement but would only examine requests for dispensation made by priests wishing to marry and requests for readmission made by clergy who had married in recent years. Milingo first angered the Holy See in 2001, when he married a South Korean acupuncturist chosen for him by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church. He renounced that union – at a group wedding in New York – on an appeal from Pope John Paul II a few months later. Milingo disappeared from his residence outside Rome in June, resurfacing a month later in Washington, D.C., to announce he was back with his wife and was championing the cause of married priests through his new advocacy group “Married Priests Now.” Milingo said the Catholic Church should embrace more than 150,000 married priests worldwide in part to ease the ongoing clergy shortage and to elevate the sanctity of marriage.The Vatican said in September that Milingo and the four men he ordained as bishops were “automatically excommunicated” under church law. The Vatican added that it did not recognize the ordination of the four – the Rev. George Augustus Stallings Jr. of Washington; Peter Paul Brennan of New York; Patrick Trujillo of Newark, N.J.; and Joseph Gouthro of Las Vegas – and would not recognize any ordinations by those men in the future. Under Vatican teaching, the authority to name bishops rests with the pope. The church also requires celibacy of its priests ordained under the Latin rite.