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Mayor of Marseille Okays Overdue Mosque Construction
MARSEILLE, France, June 26 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - France's second city could see the long-awaited construction of a grand mosque, its mayor said Tuesday after a half-century of arguments over the sensitive issue.
Marseille, where a quarter of the 800,000-strong population are Muslims, has around 50 small mosques and Islamic places of worship, but unlike Paris, Lyon and Strasbourg, no grand mosque.
"Everyone has the right to a place of worship. It's been done elsewhere, why not here?" Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin told councilors. "The time has come to respect the Muslims' requests."
Gaudin said that the city's fractious Muslim community should come together to agree on plans for the mosque and present a firm plan for how its construction would be financed.
Divisions within Marseille's Islamic community have weakened calls for the mosque, making it easier for a council that wants to avoid provoking a far-right backlash to stonewall on the issue.
But after recent municipal elections showed an erosion in support for anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups, the mayor seems determined to make good his promise to bring the project back onto the agenda.
Muslims in France have been struggling for more rights and acknowledgement of Islam. French Muslims make up the single largest Muslim community in Europe. Their number is now estimated at around six million, or up to 10 percent of the total French population. Muslims are second in size only to the Roman Catholic community.
The Muslim labor force and Muslim businessmen constitute significant economic power in the country, about 60% of them hold French nationality. Statistics show that Islam is the fastest-growing religion in France; some 50,000 Frenchmen and women are said to be converting annually.
In spite of their size, Muslims complain that the French refuse to accept the Muslim presence, considering Islam an alien force which "should be eliminated." French Muslim groups say that their communities are being overwhelmed by the "secularism" sweeping over all spheres of life in France, where it is increasingly difficult to live or bring up children as Muslims.
Last week, a French court has rejected a Turkish Muslim woman's demand for a resident's permit on the grounds that she wore a headscarf for her identity photograph.
In its ruling, the appeals court in the eastern city of Nancy, dismissed government legal advice that the woman should be allowed to wear a headscarf in her ID photo as long as it did not disguise her identity.
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