French Muslims

PARIS — While most Americans oppose banning face-covering Islamic veils, most western Europeans questioned in a new global poll say the garments should be forbidden — especially in France, where a ban may soon be a reality. Several European countries have been considering bans on such veils, with special attention on France, home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim community and a strongly secular government. The lower house of France’s Parliament is expected to approve a divisive bill Tuesday that would make it illegal to wear full-face veils in public.

A leading French Muslim group says three mosques have been vandalized over the past week and is urging authorities to punish the perpetrators. The French Council of the Muslim Faith, or CFCM, said racist insults and Nazi slogans were scrawled on a mosque in the southeastern town of Tarascon and another in the eastern city of Strasbourg on Tuesday and Wednesday. It said the mosque in the southern town of Draguignan was vandalized May 17. In a statement Thursday, the CFCM expressed concern about what it called the "multiplication of these cowardly and hateful acts" and warned against...

PARIS -- French Muslim leaders voiced deep concern yesterday about a presidential panel's report urging France to ban Islamic head scarves in public schools. In a letter to President Jacques Chirac, a council of Muslim leaders said it feared the tone and suggestions of the wide-ranging report would harm the image of France's 5 million-strong Muslim community, which is 8 percent of the population. "The spirit and the general tone of the report stigmatize this element" of French society, the leaders wrote.

PARIS — While most Americans oppose banning face-covering Islamic veils, most western Europeans questioned in a new global poll say the garments should be forbidden — especially in France, where a ban may soon be a reality. Several European countries have been considering bans on such veils, with special attention on France, home to Western Europe’s largest Muslim community and a strongly secular government. The lower house of France’s Parliament is expected to approve a divisive bill Tuesday that would make it illegal to wear full-face veils in public.

PARIS -- The two teenage friends hardly seemed like Islamic radicals. They smoked marijuana, drank beer, listened to rap music, and wore jeans. But the pair of French Muslims died insurgents in Iraq -- one a suicide car bomber, according to relatives who traced the young men's path from the slums of Paris through a religious school in Syria to the fight against the US-led coalition next door. Like many young Muslims in France, Abdelhalim Badjoudj and Redouane el-Hakim did not have jobs, and relatives and friends say they grew more alienated in recent years,...

PARIS - In secular France, it is illegal for hotel owners to turn away women wearing Muslim headscarves but OK to ban those wearing head-to-toe burqas from state-sponsored French language classes. Two recent decisions have demonstrated how tough and touchy it is to legislate religious expression in a country that has a longstanding separation between church and state - and an increasingly multicultural society with a growing Muslim population. "Religious freedom is not absolute," the head of France's government antidiscrimination agency, Louis Schweitzer, said in an...

PARIS -- Waving the French flag or wearing it as a head scarf, thousands of Muslim women marched yesterday through Paris, the center of a worldwide protest against France's plan to ban veils from public schools. From Baghdad and Beirut to London and Stockholm, protesters condemned the law as an attack on religious freedom. Even in the West Bank city of Nablus, women came out to support French Muslims. "Where is France? Where is tolerance?" the crowd chanted during the four-hour march through Paris.

A leading French Muslim group says three mosques have been vandalized over the past week and is urging authorities to punish the perpetrators. The French Council of the Muslim Faith, or CFCM, said racist insults and Nazi slogans were scrawled on a mosque in the southeastern town of Tarascon and another in the eastern city of Strasbourg on Tuesday and Wednesday. It said the mosque in the southern town of Draguignan was vandalized May 17. In a statement Thursday, the CFCM expressed concern about what it called the "multiplication of these cowardly and hateful acts" and...

PARIS -- School doors open for 12 million French children today, but there is far more at stake this year than back-to-school jitters. An already contentious ban on Muslim head scarves and other religious signs faced its first test in France's public schools -- under the cloud of Islamic radicals holding two French hostages in Iraq to press their demand that the law be scrapped. "In the circumstances we are facing, I hope this return to school will take place under the sign of fraternity," Education Minister Francois Fillon said yesterday.

PARIS -- Arsonists destroyed a Jewish community center in eastern Paris before dawn yesterday, leaving behind red graffiti with anti-Semitic messages such as "Jews get out. " Flames gnawed away the wooden doors and blackened the walls of the center, a meeting place for the elderly and disadvantaged located on the ground floor of a six-story building. Rescue workers said the center was gutted. Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and other top officials visited the center, the latest target in a wave of anti-Jewish attacks in France.

PARIS - In secular France, it is illegal for hotel owners to turn away women wearing Muslim headscarves but OK to ban those wearing head-to-toe burqas from state-sponsored French language classes. Two recent decisions have demonstrated how tough and touchy it is to legislate religious expression in a country that has a longstanding separation between church and state - and an increasingly multicultural society with a growing Muslim population. "Religious freedom is not absolute," the head of France's government antidiscrimination agency, Louis Schweitzer, said in an interview published...

PARIS -- The two teenage friends hardly seemed like Islamic radicals. They smoked marijuana, drank beer, listened to rap music, and wore jeans. But the pair of French Muslims died insurgents in Iraq -- one a suicide car bomber, according to relatives who traced the young men's path from the slums of Paris through a religious school in Syria to the fight against the US-led coalition next door. Like many young Muslims in France, Abdelhalim Badjoudj and Redouane el-Hakim did not have jobs, and relatives and friends say they grew more...

PARIS -- Waving the French flag or wearing it as a head scarf, thousands of Muslim women marched yesterday through Paris, the center of a worldwide protest against France's plan to ban veils from public schools. From Baghdad and Beirut to London and Stockholm, protesters condemned the law as an attack on religious freedom. Even in the West Bank city of Nablus, women came out to support French Muslims. "Where is France? Where is tolerance?" the crowd chanted during the four-hour march through Paris.

PARIS -- French Muslim leaders voiced deep concern yesterday about a presidential panel's report urging France to ban Islamic head scarves in public schools. In a letter to President Jacques Chirac, a council of Muslim leaders said it feared the tone and suggestions of the wide-ranging report would harm the image of France's 5 million-strong Muslim community, which is 8 percent of the population. "The spirit and the general tone of the report stigmatize this element" of French society, the leaders wrote.

PARIS - The brother of an Islamist fanatic behind a deadly shooting rampage in France celebrated his martyr-like death and may have helped him, police and a lawyer said Saturday. Counterterrorism authorities are expected to decide early Sunday whether to file preliminary charges against 30-year-old Abdelkader Merah, who has been under questioning for four days about killings in southern France that stunned the country and refocused attention on the threat of radical Muslim militants.

PARIS - Police led predawn raids across France on Friday in a crackdown against suspected Islamist extremists, arresting 19 people and carting off automatic rifles and other guns in authorities' latest response to a wave of terrorism that has shaken the country. President Nicolas Sarkozy, intent on showing an all-out fight against terrorism as his reelection contest nears, promised more such raids as his conservative government responds to a spate of shootings in southern France by a radical Islamist that left seven people dead and two wounded.