A leading French Muslim group says three mosques have been vandalized over the past week and is urging authorities to punish the perpetrators.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith, or CFCM, said racist insults and Nazi slogans were scrawled on a mosque in the southeastern town of Tarascon and another in the eastern city of Strasbourg on Tuesday and Wednesday. It said the mosque in the southern town of Draguignan was vandalized May 17.
(source)
New research shows that that there is a link between the banning of the veil in France and increased levels of hostility towards veiled Muslim women.
The Research from the Department of Criminology at the University of Leicester suggests that the veil ban stigmatises veiled Muslim women as ‘criminals’ and fosters Muslim ‘otherness’.
Even if not explicitly inciting hate-motivated violence, the law in its application contributes to a climate of intolerance of Islam in the West.
(source)
In Rabat, the Moroccan government showed no significant worries as François Hollande was declared the winner of the Presidential race. However, we picked up some signs of concerns as usually Morocco finds a more open-door policy among France’s right wing leaders and lot less accommodating Socialists.
(...)
Also a point of concern for the Moroccans is the people who surround François Hollande, in particular his high-powered political adviser Faouzi Lamdaoui, a native of the eastern Algerian city of Constantine. Read this associated analysis on the “Rise of North Africans in French Politics.”
Mr Hollande, meanwhile, took a similar position to Mr Sarkozy when it came to special treatment for France's large Muslim community.
He said he would not allow separate menus in public cafeterias or separate hours in swimming pools for men and women to satisfy Muslims' demands, and also said he would firmly support France's ban on the face-covering Islamic veils.
(source)
Sarkozy's first mention of Islam comes during a row over the left's plans to give the right to vote to non-European foreigners in municipal elections
Why do you think that non-Europeans are Muslims? Why do you say that? Why do you say people who aren't European are Muslim? asks Hollande.
Sarkozy says the right to vote for foreigners, doesn't mean Canadians, or Norwegians, but North Africans, sub-Saharan Africans, Algerians...
You're making a link with a religious identity, says Hollande.
Sarkozy warns against tribalism, citing Islam, accuses Hollande of ignoring the "reality" of the high-rise estates. He says there must be an Islam "of" France and not an Islam "in" France. Sarkozy vaunts his own ban on the niqab in France.
(source)
The graves of several Muslim soldiers in a cemetery in southeastern France were desecrated over the weekend, officials said Monday. The French president called the act "a slur" on the country's history.
(source)
If French Muslims are largely left-leaning in their voting preferences, there are exceptions. France24.com spoke to three French Muslims of Arab descent, all of whom vote for the far-right National Front party. Here are their testimonies.
Karima, policewoman: “Many of my colleagues of Arab descent vote far right, but don’t dare say so.”
A 33-year-old naturalised French citizen of Moroccan origin, Karima is a mother of three, married to a Frenchman. She arrived in France 15 years ago, and has a diploma in Computer Science from a French university. Now she works as a policewoman in Paris and declined to provide her last name.
Karima says she started becoming interested in the ideas of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the extreme-right National Front party, in 2002. That was almost a decade before Le Pen handed over the party leadership to his youngest daughter, Marine, in 2011. These days, Karima says she regularly attends party meetings and votes for National Front candidates whenever she can.
“My vote is an expression of my rejection of certain Muslim Arabs [in France], whom I personally consider ‘thugs’. They’ve destroyed French society. At least in the old days, they lived in the same suburbs,” said Karima, referring to the largely immigrant, impoverished “banlieues” of major French metropolises. “But for the last several years, the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, has done everything in his power to house them in nice neighbourhoods – like the 15th district, where I live.”(source)
Jean-Pierre, 45, the French son of an Algerian soldier who fought on the French side during the Algerian war of independence, said Le Pen was right to demand tighter border controls because there were no jobs to give to new immigrants.
The rightwing UMP party has accused Socialists of courting the Muslim vote and alleges that mosques are calling for the faithful to vote for leftwing candidate Francois Hollande.
"I want to condemn the conniving and irresponsible attitude of the Socialist Party and its candidate after religious leaders belonging to a network of 700 mosques called on followers to vote for Francois Hollande," writes UMP lawmaker Eric Ciotti in a press release on Wednesday.
(...)
Muslim religious authorities in France however deny they have called on voters to support Hollande. In an interview with the newswire AFP, Abdallah Zekri, a leader of the French Council of Muslim Faith, says imams have called on followers to vote but have not given them instructions as to who they should vote for.
(source)
A report prepared by KFH-Research stated that new global markets are seeking to join the main players in the Islamic financing industry and services, such as France. France is working relentlessly to make numerous legal and organizational reformations to facilitate the offering of Islamic financial services and products.
The report added that there is great potential for growth in the field of Islamic financial services in France, since France seeks to become a hub for Islamic banking in Europe. It noted that 1.5 million clients are willing to use Islamic banking tools and products, which equals USD 18.2 billion. In addition, French authorities have offered strong support to develop Islamic banking services, not to mention the high number of Muslims living there who seek Islamic banking services. However, the report mentioned that some legislations need to be amended.
(source)
Al Jazeera's Yasmine Ryan spoke with M'hammed Henniche, head of the Union of Muslim Associations of Seine-Saint-Denis (UAM 93) [Fr], about how all the negative attention had affected Muslim voters in the run up to the first round of voting - to be held on Sunday, April 22.
(...)
YR: During her campaign, Marine Le Pen, the far-right National Front candidate, has used the term "Islamoleftism". Do you think the feeling that, as you say, so many Muslims seem likely to vote for the left lends some truth to her generalisation?
France’s Muslim community is mobilizing voters to reject President Nicolas Sarkozy in Sunday’s election to punish the conservative leader for his anti-immigrant and anti-Islam rhetoric.
“[French] Muslims can’t stand it anymore. They are fed up with these debates about national identity, halal meat, the veil or fundamentalism all over the place,” said Francoise Lorcerie, a sociologist with the Institute of Studies on the Arab and Muslim World near Marseille.
“The terms [Islam, immigration and fundamentalism] are being used interchangeably, without care, with people being targeted, denigrated and used for [votes].”
(source)
A great French Muslim philosopher asks whether salafist violence - like that which killed the children of Jewish school in Toulouse – is not a symptom of something deeply wrong with the Muslim tradition. A religion that has closed in on itself. To renew Islam today, the challenge of modernity and humanism must be accepted. "Who will have that courage? Who will take this risk?". The analysis of Fr. Samir Khalil.(source)
Police in Paris on Friday arrested a man who took out a pistol and threatened commuters on one of the capital’s busiest Metro lines, ligne 13. The 30-year-old unidentified man of Moroccan origin, was detained by police mid-morning between Metro stations Saint-Denis Basilique and Université.
France's conservative government unveiled new counterterrorism measures on Wednesday to punish those who visit extremist websites or travel to weapons-training camps abroad, in the wake of killings by an suspected Islamic extremist in southern France last month.
The measures now go to Parliament, where they may face resistance from the Socialists, who say France's legal arsenal against terrorism is already strong enough and that the proposal is a campaign ploy to boost President Nicolas Sarkozy's chances at a second term.(source)
