The Battle of the Minarets is spreading across the borders of Switzerland and spilling into France where it’s starting to shine an uncomfortable spotlight on the country’s real attitude towards its six million Muslims.
Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, is a champion of his country’s Republican values, forged in the Age of Reason and Enlightenment. He was quick to declare that he was shocked and scandalized by the result of the Swiss referendum last month which backed a ban on the building of minarets.
But one of the men who shares the same cabinet table as him, the Industry Minister, Christian Estrosi has a radically different attitude.
He also happens to be the Mayor of Nice - a minaret-free zone - and he’s vowed to keep it that way.
The issue has arisen in the midst of a government-sponsored national debate on what it means to be French. It’s a debate that has had some unfortunate side-effects. It has allowed the country’s xenophobes to emerge from under their stones and give their extremist views the oxygen of publicity.
The Mayor though is an eloquent convert to that debate, speaking amidst the elegant frescoes of his City Hall he told me:
“Why not always nourish the debate around the humanist vision of France so that everybody can feel proud to be French, to share the same national identity? Look at me… I’m the son of an immigrant.”
President Nicolas Sarkozy has refused to condemn the result of the referendum in Switzerland and has called on all believers to practice discretion in their religious observance.
He has said politicians should start trying to understand what so many people in Europe - and in France - are now feeling. The President’s political opponents accuse him of a poorly camouflaged attempt to steal some the extreme right’s clothes with local elections due in just three months time.
Nationalists in Nice like Phillipe Vardon don’t mince their words: “ Minarets are just the visible tip of an iceberg of Islamisation - like burkas in the streets of France, halal meals being served in prisons, schools and hospitals. It’s becoming almost obligatory,” he told me.
In a suburb in western Nice we found equally uncompromising opinions amongst the residents of what was supposed to be a temporary re-settlement camp - set up in the early sixties for immigrants following the Algerian war of independence from France.
The fact that it has become a permanent ghetto for Araba from all over North Africa is a testament to the failures of integration in the city. One young man there said since Sarkozy came to power the police had started treating them like thieves. “They see an Arab face and that’s it. You get it”
In Marseille the local administration has given permission for the Muslim community to build a Grand Mosque with a twenty-five metre high minaret.
It’s a decision that has enraged the National Front in the city. One of their leading activists told me: “We must have no minarets and no cathedral like mosques. They are for us a symbol of a Muslim desire for political conquest. It goes way beyond just religious expression.”
Muslim activists in the city say they’ve seen it all before.
Ahmed Najjar told me he wished they could go back to quietly practicing Islam in their basements again:
“ The recipe before every election in France is to wave the scarecrow of immigration … but not every kind of immigration. It’s only the Arabs from North Africa and the blacks. Immigrants the establishment here think practice a kind of religion that is not able to integrate successfully in France … non-solvent religions”
The Muslim community in Marseille still need to find twenty million dollars before they can start to build their Grand Mosque. But no Quranic verses will be broadcast from the minaret. Instead a bright light will sweep the city for the call to prayers.
By David Chater
Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, is a champion of his country’s Republican values, forged in the Age of Reason and Enlightenment. He was quick to declare that he was shocked and scandalized by the result of the Swiss referendum last month which backed a ban on the building of minarets.
But one of the men who shares the same cabinet table as him, the Industry Minister, Christian Estrosi has a radically different attitude.
He also happens to be the Mayor of Nice - a minaret-free zone - and he’s vowed to keep it that way.
The issue has arisen in the midst of a government-sponsored national debate on what it means to be French. It’s a debate that has had some unfortunate side-effects. It has allowed the country’s xenophobes to emerge from under their stones and give their extremist views the oxygen of publicity.
The Mayor though is an eloquent convert to that debate, speaking amidst the elegant frescoes of his City Hall he told me:
“Why not always nourish the debate around the humanist vision of France so that everybody can feel proud to be French, to share the same national identity? Look at me… I’m the son of an immigrant.”
President Nicolas Sarkozy has refused to condemn the result of the referendum in Switzerland and has called on all believers to practice discretion in their religious observance.
He has said politicians should start trying to understand what so many people in Europe - and in France - are now feeling. The President’s political opponents accuse him of a poorly camouflaged attempt to steal some the extreme right’s clothes with local elections due in just three months time.
Nationalists in Nice like Phillipe Vardon don’t mince their words: “ Minarets are just the visible tip of an iceberg of Islamisation - like burkas in the streets of France, halal meals being served in prisons, schools and hospitals. It’s becoming almost obligatory,” he told me.
In a suburb in western Nice we found equally uncompromising opinions amongst the residents of what was supposed to be a temporary re-settlement camp - set up in the early sixties for immigrants following the Algerian war of independence from France.
The fact that it has become a permanent ghetto for Araba from all over North Africa is a testament to the failures of integration in the city. One young man there said since Sarkozy came to power the police had started treating them like thieves. “They see an Arab face and that’s it. You get it”
In Marseille the local administration has given permission for the Muslim community to build a Grand Mosque with a twenty-five metre high minaret.
It’s a decision that has enraged the National Front in the city. One of their leading activists told me: “We must have no minarets and no cathedral like mosques. They are for us a symbol of a Muslim desire for political conquest. It goes way beyond just religious expression.”
Muslim activists in the city say they’ve seen it all before.
Ahmed Najjar told me he wished they could go back to quietly practicing Islam in their basements again:
“ The recipe before every election in France is to wave the scarecrow of immigration … but not every kind of immigration. It’s only the Arabs from North Africa and the blacks. Immigrants the establishment here think practice a kind of religion that is not able to integrate successfully in France … non-solvent religions”
The Muslim community in Marseille still need to find twenty million dollars before they can start to build their Grand Mosque. But no Quranic verses will be broadcast from the minaret. Instead a bright light will sweep the city for the call to prayers.
By David Chater
