The statement came from the leader of an organization set up 15 years ago in a
bid to defuse concern about conservative religious leaders and foster a form of
Islam that would fit better with France's hard line secularism that insists on
separation of church and state affairs.
"Everyone must stick to their role," Ahmet Ogras, president of the French
Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), told Reuters in an interview.
"The Muslim faith is a religion and, as such, takes care of its own household
affairs. The last thing you want is the state to act as guardian," said Ogras, a
Frenchman of Turkish descent who has led the CFCM since mid-2017.
Macron, elected last May after a runoff victory over far-right leader Marine Le
Pen, said in a February 11 newspaper interview he planned to revisit the way
Islam was overseen.
"What I'd like to get done in the first half of 2018 is set down markers on the
entire way in which Islam is organized in France," he told the Journal du
Dimanche. The priority would be to "bring back what secularism is all about".
Traditionally Catholic France is home to the largest Jewish and Muslim
communities in Europe, with the latter estimated at 6.5 million out of a
population of 67 million.
The official rule is strict separation between religion and state, with the
former considered a strictly private matter. The rule has been used to justify
ban on the wearing of the Hijab, a headscarf worn by Muslim women, by public
service employees as well as any wearing of fully concealing head-to-toe veils
in public places.
Macron has been under pressure to limit Muslim preachers and mosques, as a wave
of attacks has killed more than 230 people in France since 2015.
France is militarily involved in Afghanistan and Mali, and in Syria it has
reportedly provided material support to some armed groups.
France's response to attacks on its soil has been to enact emergency
search-and-arrest powers, which are made permanent under tougher security
legislation. Several mosques have been shut and imams expelled.
Macron's declarations in the February 11 newspaper interview suggest he is
considering a profound reorganization of the way in which Islam is funded and
its preachers schooled.
Back in 2003, Nicolas Sarkozy, interior minister at the time and president from
2007 to 2012, engineered an agreement among the country's main Islamic groups to
create the CFCM.
The idea was to have a council to speak for Muslims similar to the way the
French Bishops' Conference speaks for Catholics or the Consistory speaks for
Jews.
Source: iqna