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France’s mega-mosque problem Funding from abroad is dividing the country

There aren't enough mosques for France's Muslims. Photo credit should read BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images

There aren't enough mosques for France's Muslims. Photo credit should read BERTRAND GUAY/AFP via Getty Images


June 11, 2021   6 mins

France has a serious mosque problem. There are not enough of them to go around.

Some of the country’s 6,000,000 Muslims worship in informal prayer rooms which occasionally become breeding grounds for radical, anti-western Islamist teaching. Financing new mosques is difficult in a secular country where public subsidies for religion are banned.

In any case, planning permission is systematically opposed by a range of Right-wing politicians, who also complain when Muslim prayers spill over into the street.

So a decision in 2013 to build Europe’s biggest mosque in Strasbourg — with the blessing of national and local politicians — seemed at the time to be an important breakthrough. Work began four years ago in an unlovely industrial estate on the southern fringes of the Alsatian capital; the Turkish Prime Minister was present, as were French national and local officials.

Construction of the Very Big Mosque — described ambitiously by its promoters as a rival to the magnificent 12th century red-stone Strasbourg Cathedral — was haphazard. Eight of the 30 domes were completed. The bases of two minarets appeared.

Building halted in 2020 and resumed this year – but stopped again last month in the midst of a many-sided political row stretching from Alsace to Paris to Ankara. Everyone involved now accuses everyone else of acting in bad faith; everyone seems to be partially right and partially wrong.

In the background — not very far in the background — is President Emmanuel Macron’s campaign to curb the spread of extremist Islamic ideology in France. Further in the background (again, not much further) are the presidential elections next April and May in which the far-Right leader Marine Le Pen hopes to exploit fear of radical Islam — and Islamophobia more generally — to reach the Elysée Palace.

The row over the Grande Mosquée de Strasbourg is, however, confusing and elusive. Macron’s interior minister Gérald Darmanin said last month that the mosque was “part of a project to impose political Islam” in France.

Is he right? Not really. The mosque’s Franco-Turkish promoters, although ultra-conservative, have nothing to do with the anti-western, jihadist ideology which has generated more than 30 terrorist attacks in France in the last six years. Almost all were committed by radicalised French or foreign-born Muslims linked to France’s 5,000,000 or so people of North African or Arab descent.

The Strasbourg mega-mosque is the project of the 700,000-strong French community of Turkish origin, which is heavily concentrated in Alsace. No Franco-Turk has been involved in any of the jihadist attacks in France, although some have been accused of acts of intra-Turkish or anti-Kurdish terrorism on French soil.

The big row over the big mosque is part of a separate, but interwoven, confrontation between France and Turkey and in particular between President Macron and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The two men have frequently wrangled and exchanged insults in the last two years over their two countries’ involvement in the Libyan conflict or illegal Turkish exploration for gas deposits in Greek territorial waters.

Turkey experts say that Erdoğan does have a political project in Europe, but it is about national influence and his own hold on power in Ankara, not the advance of Islam. His aim is to impose his own conservative nationalist interpretation of the Islamic faith on the large Turkish diaspora in Germany, France and other countries.

“The Turkish Government wanted to use this mosque as a kind of soft power,” said Erkan Toguslu, an expert on Turkish affairs at Leuven university in Belgium. “Erdoğan’s aim is not so much religious as nationalist.”

President Erdogan and the Turkish Government are, however, no longer directly involved in the Strasbourg Mosque. The ultra-conservative Turkish movement behind the project, Milli Görüs, has been close to Erdogan at various periods in the past, but Ankara cut off funding for the Grande Mosquée after falling out with Milli Görüs in Turkey last year.

So a bizarre situation has arisen. Successive French governments and local administrations gave their enthusiastic blessing to the Big Mosque when it was linked to Erdogan; after Erdogan ended his involvement it became, according to interior minister Darmanin, a Turkish Trojan Horse — an example of “foreign meddling on our soil”.

When they lost access to funds from Ankara, the mosque’s promoters asked for money from a newly-elected Green and Socialist administration at Strasbourg town hall. Previous local administrations of Right and Left had offered money for the mosque but were turned down. The new Green mayor, Jeanne Barseghian, agreed in principal to make a € 3mcontribution – almost 10% of the total cost.

Although public funding of religious projects is illegal under France’s 1905 “secularity” law, Alsace was not part of France at the time, having been annexed by Germany after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

When Alsace returned to France in 1919, it preserved some of its own laws and characteristics, and to this days Alsatian trains run on the right-hand track, as they do in Germany, not on the left as they do in most of France. The German-speaking province also retains a Napoleonic-era right to public funding of religious projects.

There was therefore nothing illegal in the decision earlier this year of the Green mayor of Strasbourg to promise the funds – yet all hell let loose all the same.

Darmanin and other members of the government accused Ms Barseghian of being politically naïve. The far-Right accused her of surrendering to so-called islamogauchisme (an alleged unholy alliance between radical Islam and the Left).

She received death threats from the ultra-Right, and was also bitterly criticised by French-Armenians — of which is she one — for helping an association which refuses to recognise the post-1915 genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

The man who leads the organisation which is building the mosque says that Mayor Barseghian has been the victim of shameless political hypocrisy. “Almost every other local political party has offered to helps us in the past,” said Eyüp Sahin, head of the Milli Görüs federation in the eastern region of France. “She never promised anything beforehand. Now they are attacking her.”

Milli Görüs has now withdrawn its request for money from the Strasbourg city authorities and, as a result, Mr Sahin says that completion of the giant mosque will be delayed until 2024 or 2025.

“It has become impossible to deal with French politics and politicians,” he said. “If we seek to raise money abroad, we are attacked. When we seek local money, the sky falls in.

When it suits them, we are French; when it doesn’t suit them, we are Turks. They demand integration. Well, we are integrated. My accent may not be French but it’s not Turkish either. It’s Alsatian.”

Mr Sahin protests a little too much, however. His organisation, Milli Görüs, is a powerful German-based movement which promotes a very conservative interpretation of Islam and seeks to preserve the Turkishness of the diaspora in Europe into the second, third and fourth generations.

Milli Görüs itself means “national dream”, and the nation that the title refers to is neither France nor Germany.

As part of President Macron’s drive to curb the growing extreme Islamist influence in France, more than a dozen Muslim organisations were asked to sign a charter earlier this year – the Charter for the Principles of French Islam — which rejects foreign influence and recognises the primacy of democracy and secular laws over sharia law. Only three refused, including Milli Görüs and another Turkish organisation even more closely associated with the Turkish state.

The balkanisation of France’s Muslim community into organisations linked directly or partly to countries of origin was once encouraged by French governments. It is now recognised as part of the problem. There already is, for instance, a big mosque in Strasbourg which is also called confusingly “La Grande Mosquée”, and which attracts worshippers from the local Maghrebin (North African) communities but not Franco-Turks.

Interior minister Mr Darmanin is threatening to dissolve Milli Görüs, as an organisation which refuses the supremacy of French law and is “tied to a foreign power”. Samim Akgönül, head of Turkish studies as Strasbourg university, says that Darmanin is missing the point and missing a trick.

Since Milli Görüs seems to have parted ways with Erdogan the French government should be finding ways, he says, to draw them into French life, not push them away.

“By refusing to consider these populations as part of French society, we are giving them up to Turkey. But in truth they are Strasbourgers,” Mr Akgönül said.

Another academic who knows Turkey well, but who asked not to be named, said that the Strasbourg Mosque row, far from curbing Erdogan’s power, was playing into his hands. “Erdogan uses France in the same way that the Johnson government does in Britain,” he said. “For both of them, stirring up anti-French feeling is a useful way of stirring up national feeling.”

President Macron’s drive to restrain extremist Islamist ideology in France was necessary and well-intentioned.

It was grotesquely misrepresented in some parts of the Muslim world – and by liberal media in the United States. Unfortunately, however, Macron has allowed his ambitious interior minister to muddle the issue with tough-man posturing – on the Strasbourg Mosque and other issues.

The big, and often misleading, row over the big mosque is part of a wider and dangerous polarisation of attitudes to Islam in France. The far-Right and even part of the traditional Right exploit Islamist excesses and exaggerate Islamist influence to disguise and promote more generalised Islamophobia. Meanwhile, part of the Left refuses to admit that violent, Islamist ideology is advancing — or even that it exists.

The Strasbourg row is confusing — far more than it needed to be — but that’s not surprising. As the 2022 elections approach, it has become increasingly impossible to speak rationally about Islam in France.


John Lichfield was Paris correspondent of The Independent for 20 years. Half-English and half-Belgian, he was born in Stoke-on-Trent and lives in Normandy.

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JP Martin
JP Martin
3 years ago

“France has a serious mosque problem. There are not enough of them to go around.”
Wow, this article starts off so badly and then it gets worse.
It’s entire starting premise is wrong. The proper starting point would acknowledge:

  • France has a serious extremism problem among its Muslim residents
  • Many of France’s mosques have been ideologically captured by the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists, and/or Wahabbists
  • France has a problem with anti-Christian hatred and attacks against churches
  • France has a problem with antisemitic hatred and violence against Jews
  • France has too many radicalised islamists for the government to monitor
  • French prisons are a breeding ground for islamist extremism
  • France has a serious immigration problem
  • Many with no legal entitlement enter/leave France with impunity
  • this includes French citizens who have been able to return from jihad in Syria
  • Many immigrant communities are not well-integrated (hence the need for the Separatism Law)
  • Immigrants (from countries such as Pakistan and Tunisia) have been responsible for major terror attacks in France
  • France has a major problem with Islamist terrorism
  • This has been especially bad since 2012 and there were six extensions of the state of emergency since 2015

Instead, this article is nothing but victim blaming. Blame France. Blame laïcité. Blah blah blah.
Please bring back Liam Duffy because he understands the issues and understands France!

Last edited 3 years ago by JP Martin
Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
3 years ago
Reply to  JP Martin

Your bullet points are valid but I don’t see them as a reason to deny people a place to worship. Extremists deny others freedom of religion and it seems that you are doing the same. Surely you want freedom from extremists rather than freedom from Muslims?

JP Martin
JP Martin
3 years ago
Reply to  Judy Johnson

Denied a place to worship? Their project is not about having a place to worship. They plan to build the biggest mosque in Europe, bigger than the cathedral of their city. This is a supremacist political project and they are aligned with a foreign government.

Simon Coulthard
Simon Coulthard
3 years ago
Reply to  JP Martin

When discussing Muslims, it is a terrible idea to start off with Islamic extremism.

JP Martin
JP Martin
3 years ago

My interest is in France not Muslims. My attention to extremism is entirely contingent on the current circumstances which have obliged me to learn far more about Islam than I ever wanted to know. With that said, where exactly should I start when discussing Islam or Muslims? And, if I should stray from these recommendations, what are the consequences? A fatwa? Please, do tell.

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago

As a matter of interest, can anyone think of any country Muslims have gone where they have not rapidly become a serious problem?
There must be one country in world history where Muslims arrived and everything got better. I’m not a historian so perhaps that’s why I can’t think of one.

AL Tinkcombe
AL Tinkcombe
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

This may surprise, but I would nominate the US. The September 11 attacks were perpetrated by Muslims in the country by subterfuge with the intent to commit terrorism. There have certainly been terrorist attacks since that were perpetrated by Muslims living in the US–San Bernardino, the Boston Marathon bombing–but Muslims hardly have a corner on mass violence in the country. I live in Philadelphia and rarely walk downtown or take public transport without seeing Muslims, who can be identified only by dress. That means primarily women wearing some form of traditional attire. Many are black Americans who practice within the Nation of Islam and often dress very conservatively–hijab or even niqab for women along with black skullcaps and orange-tinted beards for men. Others are presumably immigrants and often wear more varied traditional clothing. It’s routine to see Muslim bus drivers, Muslim clerks in grocery stores or banks, Muslim mothers with children and strollers. When I taught at the city’s community college, I had many Muslim students, black Americans and immigrants. I have never seen any reaction on the part of anyone else, no odd looks, much less overt prejudice. The city has many mosques, mostly small, store-front houses of worship which are often thriving parts of their wider community. Of course there is anti-Islamic prejudice in the US, and that could generate Muslim anger and reaction, but the reality is more complex. A friend who used to work with refugees recently told me of seven Syrian families who had been resettled in Allentown, a small city in Pennsylvania, and were welcomed with open arms. As she commented, “This is the kind of news we don’t hear.” So did Muslims arrive and everything get better? Of course not. But did Muslims arrive and not rapidly become a serious problem? Yes. Most American Muslims are fully functioning, productive members of the society and practice their religion in peace.

Irene Ve
Irene Ve
3 years ago
Reply to  AL Tinkcombe

Muslim population in the US is about 1%, in France it is about 10%. It is projected that Muslim population (as proportion of population overall) in the US will double every 25-30 years. Just give it time, you might face the same problems as France one day.

Last edited 3 years ago by Irene Ve
JP Martin
JP Martin
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

Sadly, no. I really wish that I could offer a positive example or some existing model that offers hope.

Peter LR
Peter LR
3 years ago

I didn’t find the author’s use of islamophobia very helpful or certainly accurate. It’s become a useless slur of a word.
I’m just listening to Douglas Murray’s “The Strange Death of Europe” again; and it is disturbing especially seeing such continuing ongoing problems of integration of Muslim values into Western society. It does seem like secular hubris has backfired assuming that the West had “outgrown” the need for religion and that the millions invited in would also do the same. Unlike other faiths that have managed to integrate smoothly, Islam does have a political foundation through its adherence to Sharia law and concepts of ‘Caliphate’.

JP Martin
JP Martin
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

The problem isn’t too few mosques; the problem is too many fanatics. And we are producing more fanatics than ever. We import foreign fanatics but we also create new fanatics amongst us. Douglas Murray understands this. Any honest person who has opened their eyes and seen the absolute state of Europe knows this. I work with young people and I see this problem getting much worse. The violence we are seeing is likely to intensify. Denialism won’t help. Liberal delusions are as dangerous as religious fanaticism. Lichfield, and this entire mindset, are part of the problem.

Simon Denis
Simon Denis
3 years ago
Reply to  JP Martin

Couldn’t agree more.

Noah Ebtihej Sdiri
Noah Ebtihej Sdiri
3 years ago

The real issue is that France’s constitution on which its laws are derived is outdated. The forefathers of the Revolution never conceived a world where France would host millions of Muslims. France is witnessing the emergence of what can be best described as multi-civilizationism where different communities with radically different norms and ways of life coexist more or less peacefully on the same soil.
When I go to visit my father who lives in the working-class suburbs of Lyon, I am shocked by the number of veiled women who barely speak a word of French, yet have been granted residency thanks to criminally lax immigration laws. The ethnic replacement of the French proletariat – a process set in motion in the 1960s by the French captains of industry – is almost complete, at least in France’s large metropolises.
France is a victim of its own brand of universalism and its refusal to face an uncomfortable truth.
I say that as the son of a Tunisian immigrant who worked in North Africa, but the reason why France is struggling to culturally integrate Muslim communities is that Islam is simply not part of France’s DNA, it never was and never will. As we say in French: la greffe n’a pas pris (the graft did not take).
If France wants to avoid a destructive civil war, it will need to draft a new constitution based on a more exclusive definition of the Nation and what constitutes Frenchness.

Last edited 3 years ago by Noah Ebtihej Sdiri