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France’s
Zionist government vowed Thursday to do more to "integrate" the country’s
Muslims but warned that it would not tolerate the country becoming a hotbed of
so-called Islamic "radicalism".
In a speech marking the inauguration of the Strasbourg Grand Mosque, the biggest Islamic place of worship ever built on French soil, Interior Minister Manuel Valls pledged to come down hard on suspected extremists, warning that foreign activists trying to stir up trouble would be immediately deported.
In a speech marking the inauguration of the Strasbourg Grand Mosque, the biggest Islamic place of worship ever built on French soil, Interior Minister Manuel Valls pledged to come down hard on suspected extremists, warning that foreign activists trying to stir up trouble would be immediately deported.
But
he also held out an olive branch to the country’s four million Muslims by
promising state help for the construction of more mosques and for the training
of Muslim clerics.
“Islam
has its place in France because the Islam of France, it is a part of France,”
he told representatives of the Catholic, Jewish and Protestant communities
attending the official opening of the mosque capable of hosting 1,500 people.
Relations
between the French state and a Muslim community that has its roots in former
colonies Algeria and Morocco have been strained in recent years by a string of
controversies pitting their faith against France’s secular tradition.
Legislation
introduced under Sarkozy which bans women from wearing full veils in public is
widely resented and long-running debates over halal methods of animal slaughter
and whether public prayers should be authorised have added to tensions linked
to the economic marginalisation of many Muslims.
Valls
warned Thursday that he would not “hesitate to expel those who claim to follow
Islam and represent a serious threat to public order and, as foreigners in our
country, do not respect our laws and values.”
He
also made it clear that the Muslim community as a whole had to accept
responsibility for tackling extremism, which he linked to a reemergence of
anti-Semitism in the country.
“France’s
Muslims can congratulate themselves on the singular model that they are
building,” Valls said. “Of course it remains fragile, not every problem has
been solved or overcome.
“If
all religions have their share of fundamentalists, it is in Islam that this
raises fears. It was on French soil and with a French passport that Mohammed
Merah killed in the name of Islam.
“Anti-Semitism
is a terrible scourge and its resurgence cannot be disguised.”
Built
within two kilometres from Strasbourg’s celebrated cathedral, the new mosque
has a capacity of 1,300 square metres, making it 1.5 times as big as the
previous largest one in France, at Evry in the Paris suburbs.
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