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.