Muslim worship: the new bet of the State – Le Monde

Make way for new Muslim interlocutors. The Forum de l’islam de France (Forif), made up of around a hundred people, will meet for the first time in Paris on Saturday February 5, at the premises of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council. Gérald Darmanin will be present at this event in which the public authorities want to see the birth of a partner willing to provide concrete solutions to the difficulties encountered by the second religion practiced in France. It will also be the first act of the post-French Council for Muslim Worship (CFCM), this organization created in 2003 under pressure from the State which, having left many questions unanswered, is in the process of succumbing to its divisions. .

As in 2003, this new birth owes a lot to the State. The panel was composed by its agents. The Ministry of the Interior has asked each prefect to send it the names of two or three people who have been distinguished during the three territorial meetings carried out in recent years for their skills and their ability to put forward proposals. Among these two to three hundred names, the Ministry of the Interior has selected around sixty, to which it has added around forty “qualified personalities”.

But unlike in 2003, the public authorities are not talking, this time, of giving the Muslim faith a single representative body. They believe that the misadventures of the CFCM for twenty years have demonstrated that the conception from which it proceeded, based on the role of the federations of mosques, was a dead end, so great is the Muslim diversity and powerful the antagonisms which are expressed there. This conclusion ended up being imposed on the executive, after the episode of the Charter of Principles for Islam in France, which the Muslim federations of the CFCM had to sign and which caused its break-up.

The meager results of the CFCM led him to make another choice today. After trial and error, the government has set its sights on a new model, inspired by the Deutsche Islam Conferenz in Germany. It is about creating regulations rather than an institution, “Dialogue formats” rather than a structure. “We are not going to establish a single interlocutor”, slice an actor. Were selected people anxious to provide concrete solutions rather than “to be in the picture”, according to the expression of a person close to the process. “The Forif is the emergence of these actors who plow the ground without looking for the spotlightsummarizes one of his supporters. The idea is to build from the base. »

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