Excerpt:
A sports club in Mestre, a suburb of Venice, is banning men from the pool and offering women-only sessions only as part of an experiment to integrate the Muslim community.
For the next three Sundays, the pool at Polisportiva Bissuola di Mestre will be open only to women and their children between 9am and 10.30am, the Veneto edition of Corriere reported on Thursday.
The move, launched in coordination with the Italian Union of Sports for All (Usip), is "an opportunity to promote integration and raise awareness of women from different backgrounds," Ugo Di Mauro, the president of the Bissuola sports club, was quoted as saying in Corriere. Their faith prevents many muslim women from using mixed swimming pools.