Ya gotta wonder about France. :-(
French Muslims and government formalise links with new body
by Hugh Schofield PARIS, DEC 19
In a major step forward for France's five million Muslims, the government and Islamic leaders on Friday agreed to set up the first ever unified representative body authorised to press the community's interests.
Agreement came at a two-day conclave at a secluded chateau outside Paris presided over by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who succeeded in persuading rival Muslim groups to overcome their differences and divide up positions on a new French Council for the Muslim Religion.
The breakthrough represents the conclusion of several years of efforts to set up a proper line of contact between the government and the country's second largest religious group, with the unspoken aim of encouraging a homegrown, liberal version of Islam.
The process was accelerated by the anti-US attacks on September 11, when it became clear that many young French Muslims of North African origin had been radicalised in prayer halls escaping official supervision.
Under Friday's deal the three major Muslim bodies in France – the Union of Islamic Organisations in France (UOIF), the National Federation of Muslims in France (FNMF) and the Paris mosque – agreed to share out top posts on the Council's 20-member central committee.
The Council's president is to be Dalil Boubaker, a 62-year-old Algerian doctor, who is rector of the Paris mosque and has been the favoured interlocutor of successive French governments.
France is a rigidly secular state and it regulates its relations with the other main religions through similar official bodies. The Jewish consistory for example was set up under Napoleon in 1806.
The day-to-day tasks of the new Council will be providing clergy to minister to Muslims in the army, universities and prisons, acquiring burial sites, delivering "halal" meat certificates, organising the pilgrimage to Mecca and building new mosques and prayer-halls.
Agreement on the Council came despite the doubts of some Muslim liberals, who fear that it will be dominated by traditionalists with ties of allegiance to foreign governments and institutions, with only a tiny voice for modernisers, secularists and women.
The only woman to take part in the conclave, Betoul Fekkar-Lambiotte, said Thursday she feared there would be too much power in the hands of bodies such as the UOIF, which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood and supports what she described as a "sectarian Islam."
However Fekkar-Lambiotte and another leading liberal, the mufti of the main Marseille mosque Soheib Ben Sheikh, both agreed to take up places on the Council's central committee.
According to Sarkozy, an officially recognised and accountable Islamic body is essential to dispel nascent hostility to Islam that emerged as a result of the September 11 attacks and the continuing climate of fear over the al-Qaeda movement.
"What we should be afraid of is Islam gone astray, garage Islam, basement Islam, underground Islam. It is not the Islam of the mosques, open to the light of day," Sarkozy said last week.
In setting its relationship with the community on an even footing, part of the government's aim is also to wean it from the foreign governments and institutions who have untill now subsidised many mosques and prayer-rooms, and who ministers believe exercise undue influence.
Algeria for example funds about 200 religious centres, while Saudi Arabia provided 90 percent of the money for the main mosque in Lyon. In addition 90 percent of French imams are paid by foreign countries, including Boubaker himself who is an employee of the Algerian government.
worldtribune.com |
