Sophie, our correspondent on France writes how the French government is building mosques with
public funding. I hope next up, they are digging their graves and buying plenty of lime.
IMAO, that's not dhimmitude, that's suicide. If they build them, can they monitor them too? "Europe looks anarchical."
OUTLAW MOSQUES Sophie Fernandez Debellemanière
Secularism and separation of Church and state are the basis of French Republic. Regardless of these principles, politicians in France, from mayors to president, routinely authorize the public funding of mosques and help radical Islamists penetrate the national institutions.
“The 1905 law on the separation of Church and state is unjust towards Muslims,” declared the mayor of Marseille Jean-Claude Gaudin, at July 16’s municipal council, displaying his willingness to overcome all financial hurdles to build a great mosque for the 200,000 Muslims of his city. The mayor of Marseille did not hesitate to infringe this law that is the backbone of French republic and vote a special 99-year lease for public properties, called “emphyteutic lease,” of a public land of 8.000 m2 for the symbolic price of $410. Three far right parties, including Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National challenged the decision in court. The court, considering the ridiculous price of the lease a disguised public funding, raised it to 24000 Euros per year. Facing the threat of further legal challenges from far right parties, Jean-Claude Gaudin displayed his determination to “bring the case to the Conseil d’État” (a rough counterpart of our supreme court). Municipal elections are due in 2008, and at least one-quarter of Marseille’s population is Muslim.
This illegal practice of disguising public subsidies and building mosques on public land has become extremely common. Most French towns and cities lease public land for a token sum to the Muslim community to build mosque.
1 Euro per year was the price of the lease that the municipality of Montreuil-sous-Bois, a Paris suburb asked for the land where the mosque had to be built. Then, far right parties were the only ones to object to this gross violation of the law of 1905: The National Republican Movement challenged the lease in court, and it was canceled on June 12. In May, Épinal leased a land of 8000m2 for the same 1 Euro token sum for the construction of a giant mosque with four minarets, but the decision was not condemned by the court.
On July 28, the Communist municipality of Fontenay-sous-Bois agreed to rent a 600m2 land for $2000 per year to the Association of Muslim Culture of Fontenay. And the same sort of thing is done every week in Paris, Annecy, Lyon…etc. Each time, far right parties are the only ones to challenge the decision in court. The French daily Libération asked in its edition of May 5: “Will the far right force the next interior minister to amend the law of 1905.
Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, The Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), and especially President Nicolas Sarkozy himself, have long ignored the law of 1905 to buy Muslim votes. In 2003, while he was the minister of the interior, he created the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM). This shows a political will to let religious leaders penetrate national institutions, which contradicts all the basic principles of the French republic.
Moreover, once empowered by Nicolas Sarkozy, the CFCM as its vice-president Fouad Alaoui who is an extremist, part of the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and started pursuing anti-democratic purposes. The most spectacular example of this was the CFCM’s anti-free speech action, when it sued the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo for publishing caricatures of Mohammad, in support of Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten. The plaintiff lost, but the CFCM showed how anti-democratic it was.
Working closely with the CFCM, The Foundation for Works of the Islam of France is a separate institution that receives the donations to Muslim worship, would they be coming from French or foreign entities and to warranty the loans contracted to build mosques. When public funding is not sufficient, foreign, often Wahhabi funds come to help build mosques. It seems to be the case for the construction of a mosque of the small town of Limay, West of Paris, where UMP deputy Pierre Bédier confessed to daily Le Parisien: “believers have collected up to 40 percent of the total value of the mosque, that should reach $1.5 million.” He added that: “Islam will suffer discrimination, regarding other religions” unless “foreign funding would be accepted through this foundation.”
The solution of letting French Muslims fund their own houses of worship places does not seem to be considered an available option by French politicians. When chief of the office of the worship at the ministry of the interior Didier Leschi was asked by the French daily Libération about the frequent use of disguised public subsidies to build mosques, he said that “one or two mosques or prayer rooms a week were built these last three years. Given the opposition of the far right parties he noted Sarkozy’s party faces a dilemma: “Either we ask wealthy Saudis to build minarets for us, or we amend the law of 1905.”
In his book La République, la religion, l’espérance (2004), Nicolas Sarkozy explicitly endorsed the public funding places of worship. Muslim demand for public money to build mosques could lead very soon to the amendment of the law that constitutes the backbone of French laïcité. This would blow away the principle has been the cement of French national unity. The different faiths would no longer be joined in a common republican project. The French nation is hostage to its politicians, who are unscrupulously chipping away at its foundations—and doing so with the help of the Islamists that Sarkozy has invited into the republican institutions.
