Mohamed Aboulbaki, a French Muslim, unfurled the design sheets for a gleaming new mosque where Muslims from ethnically mixed eastern Paris and its suburbs could congregate, away from the cramped prayer houses they now frequent. “The Catholics, Protestants and Jews all have a place to pray in dignity. Why not us?” asked Aboulbaki, showing the modern minaret that would change the skyline in Montreuil, a suburban town east of Paris. “Islam is the second largest religious group in France. Surely we can have a decent place,” he said.After four years of debate, the first stone for the Great Mosque of Montreuil was laid at a ceremony six months ago during which the mayor declared that the town would finally have a “mosque in full sight”. But construction had not yet started when a local far-right politician won a court ruling last month outlawing a lease negotiated with the city for a plot of land to build the mosque. The victory of the far-right in Montreuil followed a similar court decision in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille in April, both of which have dealt a setback to efforts by Muslim groups and city councils to build new mosques.
Home to Europe’s biggest Muslim community, France’s five million Muslims have only 1,500 mosques or prayer houses, most of which are housed in small modest halls often described as “basement mosques”. Echoing the view of many Muslim leaders, Aboulbaki said France must “get its mosques out of the basements” if it wants its Muslim population to fully integrate into mainstream society.
Three years after France banned headscarves in schools, the court rulings barring cities from providing land for mosques is shaping up as the latest test on how France, with its strong Christian roots, can accommodate Islam. President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose tough stance on immigration has made him an unpopular politician among Muslims, said during his campaign for the presidency that he had no objections to the local governments helping communities get a proper place of worship. Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie announced last week that she would soon present proposals with a view to “finding pragmatic solutions to the problems raised by the practice of religion”.
In Montreuil, Marseille and in a third upcoming case challenging the construction of a mosque in the Paris suburb of Creteil, far-right groups have seized on provisions of a law on the separation of church and state to argue that city councils are illegally subsidising religion by awarding leases for little money.
The Montreuil city council agreed to a long-term lease of land for the paltry sum of one euro (1.4 dollars) while Marseille had demanded 300 euros per year for a plot for the new mosque. Both have since reviewed the leases. “In Montreuil, there is opposition to the symbolic sum of one euro but in the 1930s, the Catholic Church in the Paris region got long-term leases for 1,000 francs, or about 1.50 euros,” said Didier Leschi, the director of the religious affairs office at the interior ministry.
For Patricia Vayssiere, the far-right councillor from Montreuil who successfully challenged the city’s decision to provide land, building a mosque amounts to nothing less than encouraging the emergence of a dangerous political force in France. “We are not against Islam as long as it remains a private matter,” said Vayssiere, a senior member of the far-right National Republican Mouvement (MNR). “What we want to halt is the Islamisation of our country. When we see in some towns that pork is no longer served in cafeterias, so as not to offend Muslims, or that municipal pools now offer separate swim hours for men and women, we can see that we are not just dealing with religion, but rather a political force.”
Confronting the Islamophobia of the far-right is not the only roadblock in the way of MontreuilÂ’s Muslims. Despite a major fund-raising campaign, only 200,000 euros of the total 1.5 million euros needed to build the mosque have been raised from the local community made up mostly of Malians, north Africans, Senegalese and Muslims from the Comoros.
France’s first mosque, the Great Mosque of Paris, opened in 1926 in Paris’ Latin Quarter, an architectural gem with a tea room, built with help from Algerian donors. City councils have come around to the view that building a mosque could help ease some of the tensions in the immigrant-heavy suburbs that exploded into three weeks of rioting in 2005, said Geisser. “Many mayors see a mosque in their community as a sort of clinic, with clearly identified people that they could talk to and enlist for help,” said Geisser.
Montreuil Muslims say they are ready to go to court if the government fails to redress what they see as discrimination and a violation of their rights to freedom of religion. “This government needs to say what it wants from its Muslims,” said Aboulbaki. “Muslims need to be respected and the idea that building a mosque amounts to encouraging Islamisation and fundamentalism must be removed once and for all.”