France Grapples with Islamic Integration as Interfaith Conference Sparks Debate

While on Tuesday, September 17, the Foundation for Islam in France organized its first major conference on interfaith dialogue in Paris, with the World Islamic League (WIL), the event was criticized due to the proximity of the WIL to the Saudi state.

But very quickly, Ghaleb Bencheikh, President of the Foundation, defended himself: "The Foundation will fight Salafism and any form of political Islamism. The World Islamic League is currently experiencing a moment of rupture, in the Hegelian sense," he told the newspaper L’opinion.

In reality, the French government has postponed any work related to cults. Proof of this, Emmanuel Macron and Edouard Philippe, who were invited to this major conference on interfaith dialogue, declined. According to L’opinion, Islam is another area where the voluntarism of Emmanuel Macron has given way to caution and then, little by little, to abandonment.

On his arrival at the Elysée, Macron, who had taken an interest in this vast project, will quickly be confronted with not insignificant questions: how to ensure the training of imams, prohibited by the principle of secularism, encourage an "Enlightenment Islam", without interfering in religious affairs, disseminate knowledge on Arab-Muslim civilization, without confusing religion and terrorism?

Moreover, fearing to break with the Hollande era, Macron simply refers the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) to its failures, briefly considering a Napoleonic mode of vertical organization of Islam.

A close observer of the file indicates that, for the secular state, the organization and control of the financing of the Muslim cult remains "a lever of religious prevention against radicalities and fractures in the social body". Moreover, according to Ifop, 43% of the French considered in 2018 that Islam did not correspond to the values of France.

Faced with so many tensions, the French President has retreated and, over time, has hardened his discourse against Islamism. This is evidenced by his remarks last April, when he denounced "the communitarianism that has settled in certain neighborhoods", even urging to be "intractable" in the face of "a political Islam that wants to secede from our Republic".

Moreover, the French President even pleaded, to "strengthen controls on financing coming from abroad" - Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria and Turkey.