Abandon all hope, ye who enter here: Dante's medieval classic the Divine Comedy has been condemned as racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic by a group calling for it to be removed from classrooms.

The epic poem, written in the 14th century, is split into three parts, tracing the poet's journey through Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is seen as one of the cornerstones of world literature. But the Italian human rights organisation Gherush92, which advises UN bodies on human rights issues, wants it to be removed from school curriculums, or at least used with more caution, because it is "offensive and discriminatory" and young people lack the "filters" to understand it in context.

Gherush92 singled out some particular cantos from Dante's masterwork for criticism: Inferno's 34th, which tells of Judas, endlessly chewed in the teeth of Lucifer, and 28th, in which Mohammed is depicted torn "from the chin down to the part that gives out the foulest sound", as well as Purgatorio's 26th, which shows homosexuals under a rain of fire in purgatory. The work, it says, slanders the Jewish people, depicts Islam as a heresy and is homophobic.

"We do not advocate censorship or burning but we would like it acknowledged, clearly and unambiguously, that in the Divine Comedy there is racist, Islamophobic and antisemitic content," said Valentina Sereni, president of Gherush92, to the Adnkronos news agency. "Art cannot be above criticism."

But Italy's cultural scene has been quick to come to the defence of one the country's most famous works. "The benefits to be gained from reading and studying the Divine Comedy are so many that statements of this kind are just ridiculous," the poet and literary critic Maurizio Cucchi told the news agency. Literary historian, critic and author Giulio Ferroni called the comments "another frenzy of political correctness, combined with an utter lack of historical sense", and said that the Divine Comedy needed to be read in its historical context. "You could also include a few more notes, but it would be folly to abandon the study of a masterpiece that has helped build the image of humanity."