I KNEW an Algerian delinquent who, during his umpteenth stretch on
some minor, drunken offence, thought about getting away from it all --
Paris, drink and prison, by joining the Foreign Legion. He ended up,
more realistically, vowing to join the Islamic fundamentalist movement
FIS, once he was deported back to Algeria. Never having worked in his
life, he hoped the FIS would ensure employment.
The FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) promises lots of things to lots of
people and the agreement it reached recently with the Algerian
government has caused fears that its day may not be far off. It has
pushed debate about France's four million strong Muslim population once
again to the front of the social and political stage. Yet the more the
French talk about the impassioned subject of Islam, the more confused
and worried everyone becomes.
Education Minister Francois Bayrou made front page news last week by
publishing a circular forbidding the wearing of any ostentatious
religious sign in French state schools. No one religion was referred to
in the ministerial bull, but Mr Bayrou was clearly aiming at a growing
number of Muslim girls who, over the past few years, have defied
national regulations by donning a head scarf in conformity to Islamic
rules, to attend school.
Strangely banal as that may seem through British eyes which are used
to the respect of religious distinction, here, where the lay republican
tradition keeps priest and mufti outside school, it has caused a
tremendous stir. Veils stimulate all sort of fantasy and stories of FIS
extremists manipulating the girls' families are circulating. It is far
more likely the girls are simply trying to please their parents by doing
what is expected of them.
One loud voice of commonsense who could have calmed things, died last
week -- Monsignor Albert Decourtray, Archbishop of France's second city,
Lyon, who as head of the Roman Catholic Church in France, worked with
Jews and Muslims to help understanding.
It is in Lyon on September 30, after a 15-year struggle, that a new
mosque will be opened, long behind schedule, in presence not only of the
mayor, Michel Noir, as might be expected, but also the Minister of the
Interior Charles Pasqua, who recently had suspected FIS sympathisers
rounded up and deported, plus the successor of Monsignor Decourtray, not
to mention a grand rabbi and the ambassadors of Saudia Arabia, Alergia
and Morocco.
The same day, National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen has chosen Lyon
for a meeting on its eternal theme, the fight against immigration and
the rights of immigrants -- many of them of Algerian descent, and most
of them Muslims.
There are more than 1000 mosques in France, and most of them are run
outside any official control, in any sort of meeting place that people
can get hold of. It was in such an improvised mosque in the east end of
Paris that the pro-Iranian gang which killed 13 people and injured more
than 200 in a series of bomb attacks in 1986 used to meet.
French police services now believe that such mosques, frequented by
people at the rock bottom and most vulnerable end of the social scale,
are being used by the FIS to spread propaganda, not only in support of
North African fundamentalists, but also in order to set up an sustain
support networks in Europe.
Interior Minister Pasqua, of course, is the government's front of
stage bully boy whose aggressive tactics (and in the case of the recent
FIS round-up in France, illegal tactics) are aimed at drawing Le Pen
voters back into his fold.
He is obviously in favour of handsome new mosques like the one opening
in Lyon next week which allows police to keep an eye on things. Like his
socialist predecessors, Mr Pasqua would, on a wider scale, be happy to
see the world of Islam in France brought under some sort of collective
control.
The building of the Lyon mosque, which is not even yet fully paid for,
has not only been hampered by chaotic organisation. Determined
resistance from middle class neighbours, attempting to scupper it
altogether, resulted in 30ft being sliced off the minaret, making it
bearly visible from outside, and in a ban on calls to prayer by the
muezzin.
The National Front exploited the project by organising a demonstration
in Lyon in 1990 against what it called ''Islamic colonisation''. Now,
local National Front organisers say they are delighted by the number of
people calling in to ask what can be done against the building. The
project, like Islam itself, has become a minefield where most French
politicians fear to tred.
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