France imposed ban on Muslims offering street prayers
Published by Julia Volkovah under Claude Gueant, Marine Le Pen, TF1 News on 5:07 AM
An interdict on saying prayers in the street, a practice by French Muslims powerless to locate space in mosques, has come into effect in the capital, Paris.
Claude Gueant, Interior Minister has offered believers the utilization of a empty fire brigade barracks as an alternatives.
The happening of street prayers, which see Muslims scattering mats on footpaths, became a political concern after far right demonstrations.
France is a country to the largest Muslim minority in Western Europe.
By some guesstimates, as many as 6 million French national, or just under 10% of the people, are Muslims, with origins in France's ex North African settlements.
Their additional has been a source of political dispute in the latest years, and prior this year France became the first EU country to disallow the wearing of the Islamic veil in communal.
The newly ban came into enforce at midnight (22:00 GMT) on Thursday, in time for customary Muslim Friday prayers.
Talking earlier this week to Le Figaro, Mr Gueant said at least 1,000 people were utilizing two streets in the capital's multi-ethnic Goutte d'Or district for prayers.
He said a contract had been made with two district mosques for the state to lend out the empty barracks on Boulevard Ney with floorspace of 2,000 sq m (yds) for three years.
Encouraging followers to use the new place, prayers would not be held inside the obtainable mosques for the first couple of weeks.
He said he did not consider enforce would have to be used to compel the ban because discussion was "bearing fruit".
The minister said same troubles with street prayers existed in two other cities, Marseille and Nice.
Answering to Mr Gueant's plan, Mohamed Salah Hamza, an imam in the Goutte d'Or, said groundings at the barracks were behind agenda, and he worried a "climate of lawlessness".
"We are not cattle," he was referred as reacting by France's TF1 News.
Far right demonstrations at the "Islamization" of the Goutte d'Or district started last year and in December the leader of the French National Front, Marine Le Pen, blamed Muslim fundamentalists of using prayers for political trimmings.
She divisively evaluated the act to the Nazi wartime occupation of France.
