Italy: Hitting women is a 'Sicilian-Pakistani" tradition.

No God authorizes a man to hit a woman. Them's fighting words, pardner.

Italy's interior minister Giuliano Amato, a renowned jurist and experienced politician, stunned colleagues across the political spectrum on Wednesday after saying that violence against women is a "Sicilian-Pakistani tradition.""No God authorizes a man to hit a woman," Amato, a leading member of the centre-left government coalition, told a conference on 'Islam and integration' in Rome.

"It is rather a Sicilian-Pakistani tradition which wants us to believe otherwise."In his speech at the conference, the minister - a native of the northern city of Turin, which attracted economic migrant workers from the island of Sicily in the south throughout the last century - stressed that traditions rather than religions are to be blamed on many occasions

.Amato said that up until the 1970s Sicily had traditions that were not very different from the ones imported in Italy by some Muslim immigrants today. "We must avoid blaming on God - the God of Christians and Muslims, who in reality is the same - what should instead be blamed on men," Amato said.

His words however drew the ire of lawmakers, particularly members of the conservative opposition and Sicilian natives."Amato talks carelessly. He should immediately apologize to Sicilians or I will sue him," said ex equal opportunities minister Stefania Prestigiano, a member of the largest opposition party Forza Italia and a Sicilian.

The Pakistanis couldn't be reached. They were too busy building a car bomb with the Minister's name on it.