PARIS, November 5, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Imams in the Paris suburban region of Seine-Saint-Denis have refuted claims that Islam was being used to fan the flames of rioting that continues to grip the capital, citing continued efforts to calm down the situation.

"Devout Muslims would never do such actions which run in the face of basic Islamic tenets against sabotage," Zuhair Buraik, the imam of Tariq Bin Ziyad mosque, told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, November 5.

Daw Meskine, the imam of the Clichy-Sous-Bois mosque and the secretary general of the French Council of Imams, agreed.

"Security forces have not implicated any pious Muslims in the rioting and violence, behind the clashed with the police," he said.

A hundred people were evacuated overnight from two apartment blocks in one northern Paris suburb after an arson attack set dozens of cars alight in an underground garage.

Two textile warehouses and a car showroom were also torched to the northeast of the city.

In a worrying sign, the rampages that have gripped the poorer immigrant-populated outskirts of Paris spread, for the first time, to other parts of the country, including Lille and Rouen in the north, Rennes in the west, and Toulouse, Pau and Marseille in the south.

On October 27, the electrocution of two teenagers, believed to be traced by the police in the slump Seine-Saint-Denis, sparkled the trouble, the worst since students' riots in 1968.

But since then it has become a challenge to the authority of the government and a protest against the dismal economic prospects, rampant discrimination and heavy-handed policing that the youth in the suburbs suffer.

In total, since the beginning of the rioting, more than 2,000 vehicles have been burnt and more than 420 people arrested.

Several imams interviewed by IOL the Paris poverty-ridden areas said they have been working since day one of the problem to pacify the angry young immigrants.

In his Friday sermon, Buraik he urged those involved in the rioting and violence to come to their senses.

He warned that the worsening riots were playing well into the hands of anti-Islam parties in France.

"Pious young Muslims have shouldered their responsibility from the first day of the clashes, trying to convince the angry youths of the need to calm down and stop violence," said imam Ahmad Gaballah.

"Some parties are just trying to smear the good work being done by the young Muslims," added Gaballah, also a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR).

The French Council of Imams and the federation of Islamic societies in Seine-Saint-Denis have issued a joint statement urging calm and an end to provocations.