ROME, October 26 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - An Italian court order a kindergarten to take off all crucifixes from classrooms at the request of a Muslim activist, sparking shock waves in the traditionally Roman Catholic country.

Adel Smith, a 43-year-old Italian-Egyptian convert who runs a group called the Union of Muslims in Italy, secured Thursday a ruling from a court in the central town of L'Aquila ordering the school to remove all crucifixes from the walls of a playschool attended by his son, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Sunday, October 26.

"The presence of the symbol of the cross ...shows the will of the State in the case of state-run schools to put the Catholic religion at the centre of the universe as though it were an absolute truth, without the slightest respect for the role played by other religious and social phenomena in the development of humanity," read the court verdict.

Smith, brought up in Egypt of an Italian father and an Egyptian mother, initially suggested that a symbol from the holy Qur’an should be displayed alongside the crucifix in his children's classrooms.

When the school adamantly denied his request, the Muslim activist took the issue to court.

Smith, a printer to trade, converted to Islam in 1987.

Two years ago he set up the Union of Muslims in Italy which now claims a membership of 5,300 mainly converts.

However, the decision triggered an uproar and re-opened a heated debate about religious symbols.

"You cannot eliminate a symbol of a nation's religious and cultural values simply because it offends someone," the Corriere della Sera newspaper quoted Cardinal Ersilio Tonini as saying.

"A decision like this will encourage a form of intolerance towards symbols of Christian faith," warned Rino Fisichella, deputy chairman of the Italian bishops' conference.

"We await the reasons for this decision and we will react firmly," he told la Repubblica.

The decision could cause ructions between Catholics and atheists, and also between Christians generally and Muslims, warned the newspaper.

The Italian press has compared the affair to controversy in France over the wearing of Muslim hijab in schools.

The ruling could also provide a legal precedent highlighting relations between Church and State in Italy, where Catholicism is the state religion and there is no separation between Church and State as in France.

Two laws dating from 1924 and 1927 and still in force authorize the presence in schools of Catholic religious symbols.

It has never been repealed - although the presence of crucifixes in classrooms is left to individual head teachers, BBC said.

Last month, Education Minister Letizia Moratti said the cross should remain in state schools and hospitals.

She also endorsed controversial funding for Catholic schools.

Fisichella recalled that a ruling by Germany's Federal Court ordering the removal of Christian symbols from public places "had the whole of (mainly Catholic) Bavaria out on the streets."