DIALOGUE WITH MUSLIM MODERATES AND MAGHREB

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 PARIS 006890 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/03/2015 TAGS: PREL KISL PTER FR SUBJECT: DIALOGUE WITH MUSLIM MODERATES AND MAGHREB AMBASSADORS ON ISLAM IN FRANCE REF: A. PARIS 6810 ¶B. PARIS 6579 AND PREVIOUS Classified By: Ambassador Craig Stapleton, reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (C) Summary: In the context of ongoing Muslim outreach (refs),Ambassador recently visited the Paris Mosque, paid separate courtesy calls on ambassadors from Morocco and Algeria -- the two leading countries of origin for the majority of French Muslims -- and met with a French-Tunisian author seeking to revive Islam's pluralist tradition. During the Ambassador's Paris Mosque visit, President of the Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM) Dalil Boubakeur stressed the need for Muslims to change the negative global image of Islam and stand up to fundamentalists. Boubakeur also criticized "Wahhabite" funding of fundamentalists in France, and emphasized the need for French imams to obey French law and refrain from political activities. Boubakeur described job discrimination as the leading obstacle to integration of French Muslims, a point seconded by the Algerian and Moroccan ambassadors. The Algerian ambassador described French Moroccan Muslims as more conservative than their Algerian counterparts and assessed that France was moving in a positive direction on integration issues overall, though problems remained. The Moroccan ambassador, meanwhile, stressed the need not to impugn all Muslims as terrorists, noted shared interests among French Jews and Muslims in fighting discrimination, and expressed pessimism on prospects for improving Muslim integration in the run-up to France's 2007 election. Meanwhile, French-Tunisian author Abdelwahab Meddeb stressed to the Ambassador that education, including reacquainting Muslims with pluralist, historic tenets of Islamic thought, remained essential to curbing extremist ideologies. End summary. PARIS MOSQUE RECTOR/CFCM PRESIDENT -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Ambassador visited the Grand Mosque of Paris September 22 for a courtesy call on mosque rector and CFCM President Dalil Boubakeur, a leading proponent of a moderate Islam in harmony with French values and a preferred interlocutor for the GoF. Boubakeur was eager to offer the Ambassador a tour of the extensive mosque facilities, built in 1922 with GoF funding (an exception to the famous French law of 1905 enshrining separation of church and state) in recognition of the contribution of Muslim soldiers from French colonies during World War I. Boubakeur said the mosque typically attracts 3,000 to 5,000 persons for Friday prayer services, while some 20,000 to 30,000 attend "Eid al Kebir" prayers. The mosque has five imams under the authority of its Grand Mufti, but also supervises another 100 imams affiliated with the Grand mosque throughout France. In addition to traditional prayer services, the Paris Mosque also runs an institute for training imams, in addition to operating a cafe and hammam popular with Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Boubakeur described the primary challenges facing Islam as how to practice Islam in a secular society, how to encourage Islam to accept modernity, how to help Muslim women escape outdated traditions, and how to face the challenge of Islamic fundamentalism, the latter of which, Boubakeur said, exceeded his capacity. ¶3. (C) Boubakeur stressed to the Ambassador that the U.S., Europe, and Muslim-majority countries faced a common danger of Islamic fundamentalism, which some had woken up to only after 9/11 or the July 2005 London bombings. (In a separate conversation with poloffs, Boubakeur decried the UK decision to name Tariq Ramadan to an advisory board on Islam, likening what he termed a Western fascination with fundamentalists as similar to "a bird being hypnotized by a snake.") Boubakeur emphasized to the Ambassador that Muslims must not be silent and need to change the image of Islam themselves, and convince brothers and sisters to accept tolerance. He cited as an example the GoF decision to ban veils in public schools, which had been predicted to cause major disruptions among French Muslims, while in fact the policy was entering its second year of implementation with minimal problems. The Paris mosque, in addition to advocating French Muslim compliance with the religious symbols (veil) ban, was urging the 100 imams under its supervision to obey French law and refrain from political speech in mosques. ¶4. (C) Asked about the presence of Salafists (extremists advocating a return to Islam as it was practiced in the 7th century) in France, Boubakeur compared Salafism to a sickness which goes up and down, and was now going underground in the wake of the heightened GoF security posture following the London bombings. Boubakeur conceded that there were fundamentalists in France who did not advocate violence, such as the Union for Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF),one of his main rivals in the CFCM. The GoF had sought to balance fundamentalists with the Paris Mosque faction in the CFCM, which made Boubakeur's job as CFCM president much more difficult. Boubakeur added that France had never faced a problem with Islamic fundamentalists before the 1979 Iranian revolution, before which Arabs had found other ways to express their "political dramas." Boubakeur conceded that he faced threats from Islamic extremists for his views, but he did not fear them, as they remained weak and their ideology was contrary to the progress of history. ¶5. (C) Boubakeur acknowledged that lack of integration and socio-economic problems among French Muslims, namely unemployment and poor housing, remained important factors behind the spread of fundamentalism in France. Boubakeur asserted that integration of French Muslims was moving forward in France, but not fast enough for a small minority who that transferring socio-economic problems into religious ones and seeking a new identity in Islam. Boubakeur affirmed that most French Muslims wanted to be integrated into French society, but continued socio-economic inequalities made this process more difficult. The GoF had floated various programs to address the "social fracture" in France but, in Boubakeur's view, did not have the means to fully address the problem. Boubakeur also blamed European governments for being not insistent enough that new immigrants adhere to European values of secularism; he noted that during a recent visit to Brussels, his first in many years, he was shocked to see that it resembled a "Third World" capital. ¶6. (C) Asked what more the GoF could do to help stem the tide of Islamic fundamentalism, Boubakeur stressed that Western governments needed to make clear distinctions between Islamic moderates and fundamentalists. President Chirac had sought to be helpful and had written Boubakeur to express moral support for his efforts. The GoF had been responsive to Boubakeur's appeals to increase the number of Muslim chaplains in prisons (now just 66 out or 900, despite half the French prison population being Muslim) and name the first Muslim chaplains in the French Army. Boubakeur added that it would be helpful if the U.S. and others would ask Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries to stop sending "Wahhabite" money to fundamentalists and "Salafists" in France, and perhaps direct more money his way. He noted that a massive renovation project now underway at the mosque had been funded by the GoF, the city of Paris, Algeria, and Qatar, but so far no Saudi money had come forward. Boubakeur summed up his discussion with the Ambassador by appealing for Western help in developing a peaceful Islam, at harmony with today's culture and enlightened like the Islam which had flourished during the Middle Ages. ALGERIAN AMBASSADOR ON INTEGRATION, FUNDAMENTALISM, CFCM -------------- -------------- ¶7. (C) During a separate meeting with the Ambassador, outgoing Algerian Ambassador to France Mohammed Al-Ghoualmi offered insights on the estimated 3 million Algerians and French citizens of Algerian origin living in France, the single largest component group within France's Muslim population of 5 to 6 million. (Note: Ghoualmi's estimate of the French Algerian population is a bit higher than most published estimates, which are not authoritative, given the GoF ban on maintaining statistics by national or religious origin; a recent MFA publication estimated that Algeria is the country of origin for some 35 percent of French Muslims, which would put the Algerian-origin population between 1.75 and 2 million. End comment.) Ghoualmi described French Algerian Muslims as somewhat invisible and not well integrated in France, although there were some "brilliant exceptions" in the fields of medicine, the army, diplomacy and sports. Like Boubakeur, Ghoualmi singled out unemployment as the most significant problem facing French Muslims. He observed that a diploma held by a French Muslim did not have the same value as one held by a non-Muslim counterpart, and asserted that the practice of refusing job applications based on the name of the applicant remained commonplace in France. (Note: A recent study by a French government job discrimination panel reached similar findings. End note.) That said, Ghoualmi affirmed that the GoF was well-aware of the problem, with politicians like Nicolas Sarkozy making bold proposals on "positive discrimination" (the French term for affirmative action). Ghoualmi assessed that, overall, things were evolving positively for French Algerian Muslims. By comparison, he recalled racist, anti-Arab violence which took place in France in the 1970's, which "no one spoke out against" at the time. ¶8. (C) Ghoualmi described the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in France as a serious problem, and linked it to the separation of North African immigrants from mainstream French society. Ghoualmi asserted that France needed to be more accepting of "composite identities" among its Muslim population, in order for the latter to achieve full integration. He explained the practice of wearing headscarves or beards among French Muslims as tied to the need to create an identity, rather than to religion itself. Ghoualmi concluded that France was becoming more accepting of the notion that the French identity or culture need not be a monolith. He noted that a 2001 France-Algeria soccer match in Paris, in which French-Algerian fans booed the "Marseillaise" and rooted for the opposing team, had served as a "wake-up" call for the GoF on the depth of its integration problem. Ghoualmi also made a distinction between French Muslims of Algerian and Moroccan origin, concluding that French-Moroccan immigrants were more observant and prone to fundamentalism than their French-Algerian counterparts. ¶9. (C) Ghoualmi described the creation of the CFCM as a positive move, and noted that then-Interior Minister Sarkozy had consulted him before launching the organization in 2003. Ghoualmi commended the CFCM for helping the Islamic faith "emerge from the shadows" in France. At the same time, he advised that the organization should not be considered representative of all French Muslims, and that its mission should be limited to matters such as building mosques, administering cemeteries, and supervising halal meat sales. He added that, in order for the CFCM to be a positive force, the Paris Mosque needed to hold on to its relative weight within the organizations, one country should not be allowed to dominate, and everything needed to be done to prevent having extremists take charge of the organization. He conceded that this was much easier in theory than in practice, given the serious rifts among the component groups of the CFCM. MOROCCAN AMBASSADOR: DON'T BLAME MAJORITY FOR ACTS OF FEW -------------- -------------- ¶10. (C) Moroccan Ambassador Fathallah Sijilmassi, in a separate discussion with the Ambassador, described the estimated one million French-Moroccans in France as seeking to preserve both identities, by traveling back and forth frequently between the two countries. Sijilmassi described French Moroccans as less religious than their compatriots in Morocco, but trying to hold on to traditions. Sijilmassi said he did not discern an increased threat of fundamentalism among the majority of French Muslims, and noted that a small number of individuals could exact a great deal of damage. Sijilmassi described the majority of French Muslims as feeling frustrated by the association of Islam with terrorism and the notion that law-abiding French citizens should be held responsible for the acts of a criminal few. At the same time, Sijilmassi affirmed that French Muslims needed to reject incitements to violence, and noted that the international community was paying the price for the "laxity of the past" on this issue. Sijilmassi added that he frequently visited mosques throughout France to get a better sense of community concerns. ¶11. (C) Like Boubakeur and Ghoualmi, Sijilmassi described job discrimination as the top preoccupation of French Muslims, and insisted that it was a "very real" problem. Noting that French Jews and Muslims faced similar problems over job discrimination by last name, he said he had initiated dialogue with the Jewish Council for Religious Institutions in France (CRIF) and found both communities to have a converging interest in countering discrimination. Unlike Boubakeur and Ghoualmi, Sijilmassi was less optimistic about prospects for improving integration of French Muslims in the near term. He cited the looming 2007 presidential elections in France, and observed that the 2002 showing of the far-right National Front, which garnered over 15 percent of the vote at that time, would push presidential candidates towards courting extreme-right voters. The GoF emphasis on security in the run-up to the elections would further complicate matters. That said, Sijilmassi noted that French Muslims were voting more and starting to increase their involvement in politics. While noting that French Muslims tended to vote left, he credited President Chirac with being a "champion" of the Muslim community in France, and also praised Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe for sending positive messages. FRENCH - TUNISIAN AUTHOR ON "THE MALADY OF ISLAM" -------------- -------------- ¶12. (C) The Ambassador welcomed French-Tunisian author and professor Abdelwahab Meddeb to a recent roundtable lunch on Middle East issues, where he joined a group of three other French think-tankers and emboffs. Meddeb presented the Ambassador with a copy of his 2002 book, "The Malady of Islam," in which he diagnosed the "malady" of Islam to be its alienation from the West and the corrosive influence wrought by fundamentalism. Meddeb cited education -- specifically educating Muslims about the pluralist tradition of Islamic thought -- as key to curbing extremist ideologies in Europe and the Muslim world. He asserted that countries like Saudi Arabia should not have a monopoly on Islamic thought, and added that scholars in the West had a base of knowledge on the historic, pluralist tradition of Islam which they should convey to the people of the Middle East region. Rather than echo his French compatriots' warnings against Western efforts to impose views on the region, Meddeb concluded that we should not be shy about outside engagement to help the Islamic world rediscover its pluralist tradition. On a separate note, Meddeb was the only one among the four French participants to express support for Operation Iraqi Freedom. COMMENT -------------- ¶13. (C) Comment: We will continue and expand these Ambassadorial-level exchanges, which were well-received by all participants, to gain a better picture of Muslim community issues in France and seek greater cooperation with like-minded opponents of extremism. Although CFCM President Boubakeur's popularity and close ties with the GoF and Algerian government are often questioned in the French media, his message of tolerance and rejection of extremism is worthy of support. Our Public Affairs section is exploring means for possible cooperation with Boubakeur's Islamic Institute at the Paris Mosque, including book donations and IVLP programs. The Ambassador plans to continue high-level Muslim outreach in October by hosting the embassy's fifth annual iftar with French Muslim community leaders and civil society representatives. End comment. Please visit Paris' Classified Website at: http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/paris/index.c fm STAPLETON