Preaching for the Enemy
By Olivier Guitta
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 15, 2004
France is home to the largest Muslim community in Europe -- estimated between 5 and 8 million, roughly over 10 percent of France’s total population. In the past few years, the radical element of these French citizens has grown quickly, and is quietly overpowering more moderate Muslim voices. Many French Muslims idolize Osama bin Laden and consider the destruction of synagogues and assault of Jews to be justified retribution. These worrisome phenomena are caused by a number of things: increasing influence of radical imams in French mosques, the penetration of Saudi Wahhabism and extremist satellite networks spreading their propaganda.
I recently discussed these issues with Jean Francois Cope, spokesman of the French government, during a press conference in Washington DC. First, I asked Mr. Cope: knowing that 91 percent of the imams preaching in France are foreigners and most of them are illegal immigrants, does it not make sense to expel them, particularly those preaching hatred?
He answered that France cannot just expel them because these hate-mongering imams have been around for a while, as has their families. It would not be proper. Perhaps other French officials realized how silly this answer is, since very recently France expelled 5 of the most outrageously extremist imams since the beginning of the year. But in a country with 1,500 imams, this is just a drop in the ocean.
But exporting extremists isn't likely to make much of a dent in the growing radical movement, considering the impact Saudi Arabian Wahhabism has on French Islam. According to Stephen Schwartz and Dore Gold, both prominent experts on Saudi Arabia, the country funds 80 percent of every mosque and Islamic center in France. Saudi Arabia financed the very luxurious Institute of the Arab World in Paris. Also, Le Monde recently reported that Saudi Arabia is going to finance the restoration of the Paris Mosque.
So I asked Mr. Cope his opinion on this issue. Disappointingly, he denied any presence of Saudi Arabian influence in France. He added that the government was adamant in building a French Islam and as such is working with the French Muslim Council (FMC) to demand that future imams speak French. Today, more than 50 percent do not speak the vernacular, but Mr. Cope says time will change this.
Unfortunately, his optimism might be very short-lived for a couple of reasons. First, one of the main Muslim organizations in the FMC is the Union des Organizations Islamiques de France (French Union of Islamic Organizations, UOIF) - which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the terrorist movement founded in 1928 in Egypt. Second, the Arab newspaper Al Watan recently reported that the Saudi sponsored Islamic Countries Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization (ICESCO) is going to finance a new school for training new French imams. So much for a true independent, foreign-free French Islam.