Representatives of French Muslim organizations

PARIS, December 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - In what Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy described as a historic advance for French Muslims, the government and Islamic leaders Friday, December 20, agreed to set up the first ever unified body authorised to speak on behalf of the five million strong community.

Agreement came at a two-day conclave at a secluded chateau outside Paris presided over by Sarkozy, who succeeded in persuading rival organizations to overcome their differences and divide up positions on a new French Council for the Muslim Religion, reported Agence-Presse (AFP).

Under the deal the three major Muslim bodies in France - the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF), the National Federation of Muslims in France (FNMF) and the Paris mosque - agreed to share out top posts on the Council's central committee.

The Council's president is to be Dalil Boubaker, a 62-year-old Algerian doctor, who is rector of the Paris mosque and has been the favored interlocutor of successive French governments.

In a statement issued after the announcement, the Muslim leaders paid tribute to Sarkozy for hastening the deal which they said "responds to the urgent wishes of France's Muslim community and the expectations of French society as a whole."

The breakthrough represents the conclusion of several years of efforts to set up a proper line of contact between the government and the country's second largest religious group, with the unspoken aim of encouraging a homegrown, liberal version of Islam, AFP said.

France is a rigidly secular state and it regulates its relations with the other main religions through similar official bodies. The Jewish consistory for example was set up under Napoleon in 1806.

The day-to-day tasks of the new Council will be providing clergy to minister to Muslims in the army, universities and prisons, acquiring burial sites, delivering halal meat certificates, organising the pilgrimage to Mecca and building new mosques and prayer-halls.

Fekkar-Lambiotte and another leading liberal, the mufti of the main Marseille mosque Soheib Ben Sheikh, both agreed to take up places on the Council's central committee.

According to Sarkozy, an officially recognised and accountable Islamic body is essential to dispel nascent hostility to Islam that emerged following the September 11 attacks.

"What we should be afraid of is Islam gone astray, garage Islam, basement Islam, underground Islam. It is not the Islam of the mosques, open to the light of day," Sarkozy said last week.

In setting its relationship with the community on an even footing, the government's aim is also to wean it from the foreign governments and institutions who subsidise many mosques and prayer-rooms, and who ministers believe exercise undue influence, AFP said.

Algeria funds about 200 religious centers, while Saudi Arabia provided 90 percent of the money for the main mosque in Lyon. In addition 90 percent of French imams are paid by foreign countries, including Boubaker himself who is an employee of the Algerian government.