← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Centinel
Thread ID: 4541 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2003-01-20
2003-01-20 19:43 | User Profile
From BBC News, available online at: [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2670399.stm]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2670399.stm[/url]
Friday, 17 January, 2003, 21:28 GMT
Secular France mulls mosque subsidies
By Henri Astier BBC News Online
French officials have called for a revision of a century-old law on the separation of church and state, to allow government bodies to subsidise mosques.
An estimated five million Muslims live in France - making Islam the country's second religion.
The vast majority worship in small, makeshift premises, rather than purpose-built mosques.
Some French officials say local authorities should be allowed to help provide decent places of worship for Muslims - but many others remain unconvinced.
A 1905 law - which many in regard as the cornerstone of France's secular state - prohibits government funding of religious bodies.
However public funds can be used for the upkeep of Roman Catholic churches built before 1905 - which were taken over by local authorities.
Pierre Bedier, a junior minister in the current conservative government, says the law needs to be updated.
"Secularism is necessary, but the way it is implemented must evolve," he told Le Monde newspaper.
Mr Bedier says a change is needed because French Muslims are turning for money to Arab governments with fundamentalist leanings.
"I find it healthier that mosques should be financed through public funds, rather than by those states," Mr Bedier is quoted as saying by Le Monde.
Contentious
Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has encouraged the creation of a council to represent French Muslims, has not taken position on the issue of public funding of mosques.
But government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope has called for "new thinking" on this.
"You cannot at the same time oppose foreign funding of places of worship and do nothing," he told Le Monde.
However, a change in the 1905 law would be hugely controversial. Many politicians of both the right and the left remain attached to the traditional concept of the secular state.
A revision of the 1905 law "will not go down well," socialist MP Christian Bataille told Le Monde.
"It would lead to enormous expenses," Jean-Claude Gaudin - the conservative mayor of Marseille, a city with a high Muslim population - is quoted as saying.
There are about 1,600 mosques and Muslim prayer halls in France. Most are less than 30 square metres (300 square feet).
2003-01-20 20:04 | User Profile
Why can't they just hold a bake-sale?
It boggles the mind to wonder what the heck happened to France. Then again, I guess they're just a little further down the road than we are.
2003-01-20 20:05 | User Profile
C'est ridicule et triste. Comme Les Etats-Unis, France irait a l'abbatoir tres bientot.
2003-01-20 22:07 | User Profile
By way of explanation...
The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris Theodore Dalrymple
[url=http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_the_barbarians.html]http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_the_...barbarians.html[/url]
Everyone knows la douce France: the France of wonderful food and wine, beautiful landscapes, splendid châteaux and cathedrals...
But there is another growing, and much less reassuring, side to France. I go to Paris about four times a year and thus have a sense of the evolving preoccupations of the French middle classes. A few years ago it was schools: the much vaunted French educational system was falling apart; illiteracy was rising; children were leaving school as ignorant as they entered, and much worse-behaved. For the last couple of years, though, it has been crime: lââ¬â¢insécurité, les violences urbaines, les incivilités. Everyone has a tale to tell, and no dinner party is complete without a horrifying story. Every crime, one senses, means a vote for Le Pen or whoever replaces him. ... Whether France was wise to have permitted the mass immigration of people culturally very different from its own population to solve a temporary labor shortage and to assuage its own abstract liberal conscience is disputable: there are now an estimated 8 or 9 million people of North and West African origin in France, twice the number in 1975ââ¬âand at least 5 million of them are Muslims. Demographic projections (though projections are not predictions) suggest that their descendants will number 35 million before this century is out, more than a third of the likely total population of France. ... [url=http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_the_barbarians.html]More... (too long to post it all. Definitely worth reading though)[/url]
2003-01-20 22:20 | User Profile
'Stun Gun, Tear Gas Found in UK Mosque Raid Mon Jan 20, 1:14 PM ET Reuters
By Andrew Cawthorne
LONDON (Reuters) - Police searching a London mosque that was raided in Britain's biggest anti-terror operation since September 11 have found tear gas and a stun gun, a police spokeswoman said Monday.
Seven men were arrested at the North London Central Mosque during a police raid that was part of a wider probe into the discovery of ricin poison.
Security services believe the mosque, in the suburb of Finsbury Park, was a center for recruiting and supporting violent Islamic extremists.'