Arab News

PARIS, 30 June 2003 — Official efforts to better integrate France’s five million Muslims into mainstream French society were in turmoil after a moderate Islamic leader tendered his resignation as head of a council increasingly influenced by hard-liners, and then retracted it hours later.

Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Grand Mosque of Paris, said on Friday he was quitting as government-designated head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) representing the country’s Muslims. Muslims are France’s second largest religious group.

The government set up the council to promote dialogue with a minority often sidelined in this traditionally Catholic country of 60 million.

Boubakeur, an Algerian with close ties to President Jacques Chirac, was appointed to head the panel.

Within hours of announcing his resignation, Boubakeur retracted it saying it had been mistakenly faxed off by a negligent secretary. However, he said he would stay on only if he could effectively lead the council.

Most of France’s Muslims are immigrants or children of immigrants from its former Arab colonies in North Africa. But integration has been patchy and xenophobic National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen won 17 percent of the vote in the first round of 2002 presidential elections.

Increasingly under fire, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy vigorously defended the council he created.

“We have to develop a French Islam,” he told the newspaper Le Figaro on Saturday. “How can you develop a French Islam if you don’t want to talk to anybody? The rise in fundamentalism is the product of a discussion we haven’t had.”

Sarkozy persuaded the country’s fractious Muslims last year to form a council like the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish umbrella groups that deal with the secular French state. But moderate Boubakeur’s position was undermined when his group came third last April in voting for the council, behind the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF). The UOIF swept regional CFCM elections this month.

Boubakeur, 62, issued a statement on Friday saying he was resigning for health reasons, only to retract it hours later. He attempted to quit two weeks ago, but was persuaded at the time to stay on by Sarkozy. Sources at the CFCM say that apparently it was again Sarkozy who persuaded Boubakeur to not go through with his decision on Friday.

The UOIF, whose doctrines are close to the Muslim Brotherhood, has gained ground in recent years in the poor suburbs where disaffected Muslim youths — many born in France — increasingly turn to Islam for identity and values. “The CFCM has exposed a situation that we have willingly ignored,” Sarkozy said. “Who cannot see that the big question here is one of an identity that has been humiliated? A humiliated identity is an identity that turns radical.”

The minister also advised caution against rising calls for France to ban Muslim headscarves in schools as incompatible with the strictly secular values the state stands for.

“It’s irresponsible to ask whether Islam is compatible with our republic, because if you say ‘no’, what do you do then? Do you ask the Muslims to leave? Do you ask them to convert?”

Gilles Kepel, a leading French expert on Islam, accused Sarkozy of misusing religion for political ends by trying to boost a pro-government leader through a body hard-liners could influence thanks to their superior organization.