FRENCH GOV'T PLANS DIALOGUE WITH MUSLIMS

**France unveiled an outline for new measures on Wednesday aimed at increasing security for the country’s Muslim population as well as forging closer links with the community.**(Photo: On Islam)

Paris, 8 Jumadil Awwal 1436/27 February 2015 (MINA) – Amid increasing feelings of insecurity among the religious minority, France unveiled an outline for new measures on Wednesday aimed at increasing security for the country’s Muslim population as well as forging closer links with the community.

“We want to form the most representative forum possible,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told the daily Le Monde, Reuters reported on Wednesday, February 25, On Islam quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

“We must permit all representatives of a tolerant and peaceful Islam to discuss and resolve problems in an orderly manner.”

The new measures, including a bi-annual “dialogue forum” with Muslims, were suggested after Charlie Hebdo attacks last January which left 17 dead including two Muslims. Moreover, the plan comes as a declaration by the government of the inability of the official French Muslim Council (CFCM) to deal with challenges facing the minority.

New security measures included putting around 1,000 Muslim sites, including cultural centers and mosques, under surveillance by the police and military last January as part of a government crackdown on radicalization, Local.fr reported.

The government now plans to install CCTV on the most at-risk Muslim sites. Any Islamophobic attacks will be recorded as such in local authorities logs, same as the case with anti-Semitic attacks.

Seeing the Charlie Hebdo attack as a betrayal of Islamic faith, leaders from Muslim countries and organizations have joined worldwide condemnation of the attack, saying the attackers should not be associated with Islam.

Yet, the National Observatory Against Islamophobia said over one hundred incidents have been reported to the police since Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 7-9. The rise in attacks over the last two weeks represents an increase of 110 percent over the whole of January 2014, the organization said.

Moreover, a Muslim father was stabbed to death in his own home in southern France this week by a neighbor who claimed to be avenging Charlie Hebdo.

Imams Training

Training preachers and imams is also a key part in the new measures. Much of the focus will be on the training of Muslim preachers, trying to “encourage the emergence of a generation of imams fully engaged in the Republic”, an interior ministry source said.

“Certain imams lack knowledge of the language and the law,” the ministry official said.

According to French officials, the reforms have been under preparation for a long while, but the January 7-9 attacks have added a sense of urgency. The government says they are partly designed to protect Muslims. January saw 176 acts of aggression against Muslims, more than the whole of 2014.

“It is crucial the Republic protects all its children and especially mosques from anti-Muslim acts,” said Cazeneuve.

Dalil Boubakeur, the head of the Islamic organization the Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman (CFCM) and rector of Paris’ Grand Mosque, said on Tuesday he had requested the support of the authorities to provide training for imams in order “to ensure that they do not spread extremist messages”.

Boubakeur boycotted an annual dinner organized by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France, or CRIF, on Monday after its leader Roger Cukierman said that “young Muslims were responsible for all violent crimes in France”.(T/P011/P3)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)