By ELAINE SCIOLINO http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/14/international/europe/14FRAN.html ÉVRY, France, April 13 — For Karima Debza, an Algerian-born mother of three and a volunteer in the local mosque, casting her vote today is a symbolic step toward promoting the rights of Muslim women in the workplace. For Djiba Aboubacar, a Senegalese-born accountant, the election is a flawed but long overdue process that will eventually give voice to France's diverse and divided Muslim community. Advertisement The two were among 137 delegates who voted in the modern city hall of this working-class suburb of Paris, not for a school board or town council, but for the first organization to represent the five million Muslims of France. It is part of an ambitious national project to create what Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has called "an official Islam of France." Mr. Sarkozy, who has spent much time visiting mosques and Islamic centers to win support for the council, told worshipers at a Lyon mosque before the first round of voting a week ago that organizing France's Muslims is the way to fight "the Islam of cellars and garages that has fed extremism and the language of violence." At polling stations throughout the country last Sunday and again today, more than 4,000 delegates from nearly 1,000 mosques and prayer centers voted for members of the new council's general assembly and central committee, as well as 25 regional bodies. The council will deal directly with the French government on issues as wide-ranging as the cutting of meat according to Islamic standards, the need for more Muslim chaplains and social workers in prisons, the administration of France's mosques and prayer houses and ways to prevent the radicalization of young Muslims. Muslim leaders say the council will also give them greater authority to get building permits and financing for mosques and designated space for Muslims in cemeteries. They also seek paid time off to celebrate Islamic holidays. "This is the first time that Muslims are voting as Muslims, that I don't feel like a foreigner in France," said Muhammad Aziz Aziz, the Moroccan-born liaison official between town authorities and the grand mosque of this city, which he described as the biggest mosque in Western Europe. "This is the first time that Islam is considered a building block in France's democracy." That sentiment is not universal, however. About 20 percent of the mosques and prayer centers of France, including some of the country's most conservative Muslim groups, boycotted the election. Critics have charged that the slate of candidates guarantees that the council will be unduly influenced by Algerian and Moroccan Muslims. And there is sharp opposition to the deal cut with the three largest Muslim federations, under pressure from the government, to appoint Dr. Dalil Boubakeur, an Algerian who heads the Paris Mosque, as the first president of the council, even before the election. They note that Dr. Boubakeur is not a theologian or a student of philosophy, but a medical doctor, and that his mosque is financed in part by the Algerian government. Mr. Aboubacar, who is helping to raise money for an Islamic culture center in the suburb of Corbeil, shares some of those views. "We don't want this council to look like a bunch of marionettes who are there only to say, `Yes, yes, yes,' to the government," he said. "But we can't do combat from the outside. We have to get inside and then we can fight to make this organization more representative." There are also complaints that the number of delegates appointed by each mosque and prayer center was decided by its square footage, not by the size of the congregation. In France, anyone can declare himself the head of a mosque or prayer room and preach to a congregation. Among the government's goals is to educate a new generation of French-speaking imams or prayer leaders within France, and eventually replace those who come from abroad. The grand mosque here, for example, has three imams, all of whom preach in classical Arabic every Friday. Khalil Merroun, an aeronautical technician who serves as director of the mosque, said he must translate their sermons into French for the largely French-speaking congregation. In a recent interview on French television, Mr. Sarkozy praised the French experiment as "setting an important example," adding, "What I want is a training college for imams who speak French, who know our culture and respect our customs." Then there are the women's issues. Ms. Debza, for example, who covers her hair with two scarves, wants the council to press the government to bend its 1905 law separating church and state, which forbids any display of religiosity in schools or the workplace. "I can't find work here because of my head scarf," she said. "But my head scarf is a part of me. I won't take it off. We have to educate the state about why the scarf is so important and why there should be no fear of it." The creation of the council is part of a campaign by successive governments since the 1980's to gain control over a community that includes Muslims of varying degrees of religiosity and political activism from places as far-reaching as Algeria and Cameroon. Only half of them are French citizens. Similar bodies already exist for Catholics, Jews and Protestants. The effort to organize the country's Muslims took on more urgency after Sept. 11, which led to a rise in anti-Muslim feelings among French citizens. Meanwhile, the American-led war against Iraq and the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis has fueled anti-American sentiments among Muslims and Arabs in France. According to a poll last month in the newspaper Le Figaro, 72 percent of France's Muslims said they hoped the United States would lose the war in Iraq. Seventy-nine percent favor the creation of private Koranic schools financed by the state and 55 percent oppose the ban on head scarves for girls in schools. Here, meanwhile where more than a third of the population of 50,000 residents is Muslim, a huge banner in red and black hanging over the entrance of the city hall reads "No to the war." |