What’s all this malarkey? The decision to force a ban on the display of crucifixes in Italian state schools by the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights has raised a right furore throughout Europe and even further afield.

To give some background, the case arose as a result of a legal suit field by a Finnish mother in northern Italy who fought for eight years to have crucifixes removed from her children’s classrooms. Though the European court’s decision does not call for immediate removal of all the Italian crucifixes, it could eventually force a continent-wide review of the use of religious symbols in all state-run schools.

The Italian government announced it would appeal the decision that would force Italy to pay a e5,000 fine to the mother.

Now then. The fundamentalists (make no mistake, they are aplenty) have argued that this is a direct assault on the Catholic (not Christian) religion and on the freedom to express religious sentiment. They may be right – or at least in their own mind. But the issue here runs much deeper than (and we mean no offence) a little man on a cross.

The issue which is really at stake here is whether the Court, which has nothing to do with the European Union, should have a right to impose its decision on Italy – the birthplace of Roman Catholicism as we know it.

The legal eagles will tell us that it is about jurisprudence – but it isn’t. It is an issue of whether the court is morally correct in banning a religious, and far more importantly a cultural symbol in the capital of Catholicism.

Let us piece it together bit by bit. A Finnish immigrant (no not an economic migrant) chose to make a life in Italy. She had children and sent them to school. She decided that the figure of a tortured Jesus Christ on the wall was offensive to her children and petitioned the courts to have them removed.

Well, well. One woman who decides to go live somewhere else has single-handedly moved to destroy a part of Italian culture.

Roman Catholicism is by far the largest religion in the country, although the Catholic Church is no longer officially the state religion. 87.8% of Italians identified themselves as Roman Catholic, although only about one-third of these described themselves as active members (36.8%). So the argument here is that the Crucifix is as much a cultural ideal in Italy and not just a religious symbol.

Who on earth has the right to tell a country to reverse its culture? The children being offended argument is a load of codswallop. In 2009 (let’s go back to 2001 to the origins of the case), children are brought up on violent television, violent video games (and yes, they are fun to play) – so we would have to say that if zombies having their heads blown off is perfectly acceptable, then so is the portrayal of Christ on the cross.

We would have to question – who on earth has the right to tell the people of Italy – generations and generations of them what they can and cannot do with a crucifix? We repeat, the issue here is that the court should not have the power to tell a country what it should and should not do with its culture.

Some countries argue that bear baiting is culture, fox hunting is culture and the Maltese argue that hunting is culture – that is barbarism not culture. But a crucifix, within the confines of a school in Italy is not barbarism – it is culture and no organisation or body should have the right to alter it. The mother should have stayed in Finland and played with some reindeer with her overly sensitive children. Where will we draw the line? Will it come to public processions being banned? Sausages being banned? It’s sheer madness.