Muslims irked by Italian senator's "pig" comments

By Silvia Aloisi

ROME (Reuters) - A far-right Italian senator outraged Muslims on Thursday by calling for a "Pig Day" protest against the planned construction of a mosque in northern Italy.

Roberto Calderoli of the anti-immigrant Northern League party said he was ready to bring his own pig to "defile" the site where the mosque is due to be built in the northern city of Bologna.

"I am making myself and my pig available for a walk at the site where they want to build the mosque," Calderoli, who is a deputy speaker of Italy's Senate, said in a statement.

Calderoli also said he would eat "a nice plateful of pork chops to show my lack of sympathy for those who consider pork forbidden meat."

Muslims do not eat pork and consider pigs and their meat too filthy to touch.

"Those words are highly offensive and indecent, especially as they are coming from an Italian lawmaker," Mario Scialoja, a prominent leader of Italy's Muslim community, told Reuters. "It left me speechless".

Tensions flare regularly between communities in predominantly Catholic Italy over the site of new mosques to serve a growing Muslim population.

On Wednesday night, around 20 people staged a protest near the port city of Genoa over the planned construction of a mosque which they said would be offensive because it is near a church.