The French authorities will create a new governing body for the Islamic community
Photo: Dinuka Liyanawatte / Reuters
The French authorities will create a new governing body for the Islamic community in the country. It will consist of clergy and Muslims. Such a measure is designed to rid Islam of extremist currents and change its negative image in society. This is reported by ABC News.
The new body will be called the Forum of Islam in France. The initiative to create it belongs to the French Ministry of Internal Affairs, whose representatives agree that this will help save five million Muslims from the harmful foreign influence of extremism and radical Islamic movements and ensure the priority of secular values in public life.
The new body will include imams, prominent community figures, representatives of the Islamic intellectual elite and entrepreneurs. As the French media reported earlier, the government of the country intends to choose the members of the organization independently, a quarter of all participants of the Forum will be women.
Critics of this initiative, who consider Islam part of their French national identity, consider this measure discrimination and an attempt by the government to hold the Muslim community responsible for the crimes of Islamic fundamentalists.
The new organization will replace the “French Council of the Muslim Faith”, which was established in 2003. The authorities stated that it failed to fulfill its main role and did not become an intermediary between the Government and religious leaders.
Islam is the second religion in France. There is no single leader in the French Muslim community, but there are many trends, from moderate to radical views of fundamentalist Salafists. Last year, the French parliament approved a law to strengthen supervision of mosques and schools to protect the country from Islamic extremists and support secular civic values.
