French Imams Protest National Council Plan, Citing Foreign Influence Concerns

The Council of Mosques of the Rhône (CMR) "expresses serious reservations about its effectiveness, its sustainability, its dependence on foreign countries and the adherence of the base to this project," says a press release published on behalf of the CMR by the rector of the Grand Mosque of Lyon Kamel Kabtane. For the official, the CNI will only "reinforce the disinterest that the Muslims of France have cultivated since 2003 towards" the CFCM. Since it is the presidents of the nine Muslim federations who make up the CFCM (who are not imams) as well as one imam per federation, chosen by its president, who will lead the future council.

"How come a National Council of Imams is being imposed from above? Imams are adults and vaccinated, and are capable of organizing themselves," reacted in the columns of the newspaper Le Monde the imam Tareq Oubrou, rector of the mosque of Bordeaux. Mohamed Bajrafil, for his part, decided on Friday, November 20, to stop being an imam. For him, the announcement of this CNI was "the last straw." "The CFCM proposes to ’label’ me as an imam, when I am a university professor and have been officiating for 21 years without ever having been employed by a mosque!" he was outraged, in La Croix.

"By what right does a math professor, a lawyer or a bus driver (some of the professions of the presidents of the CFCM federations, editor’s note) come to lecture us? Imams are professionals who need to be trained, supported and paid, not children to be slapped on the fingers in a populist approach!" fumes with anger Abdelali Mamoun, an independent imam practicing in the Val-de-Marne.

In the eyes of the imams who oppose the future CNI, French President Emmanuel Macron is mistaken in his method of eradicating "consular Islam." "The CFCM should rather be called CECM, Foreign Council of the Muslim Faith," ironizes Mr. Mamoun. The latter recalls that the CFCM federations maintain close ties with Algeria, Morocco and Turkey. "The organization of worship was already subject to consular interference, and now it will be the turn of theological issues! With the CNI, the French state endorses the total interference of foreign countries on France’s Islam," he fears.