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9 November 2005

French religious leaders call for calm in face of nationwide violence

Bernadette Sauvaget
Paris (ENI). Religious leaders in France have appealed for calm in the face of unrest gripping the country which has led the government to declare a state of emergency, allowing curfews to be imposed in towns hit by the violence.

One Muslim group, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, has issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, prohibiting "any Muslim to take part in any action linked to indiscriminate violence against public or private property". At the same time Muslim leaders on the ground have offered their services in mediation to restore calm.

Many of the city suburbs affected by the 13 nights of unrest have large Muslim populations.

Two Roman Catholic bishops left a meeting in Lourdes of the bishops' conference before it was to finish on 9 November to return to their dioceses in Seine-Saint-Denis and Hauts-de-Seine near Paris that have been hard hit by the violence in which cars and buses have been set on fire.

The president of the bishops' conference, Archbishop Jean-Pierre Ricard, criticised "repression and incitement to collective fear" which he said "were not adequate as an answer to the dramatic tensions of our society", in an apparent reference to the government's get-tough rhetoric in recent days.

He said, "It is vital that the new generations often without hope are offered a way forward of freedom, dignity and respect for others."

Bertrand Vergniol, president of the Mission Populaire, a Protestant group that works in deprived areas, said that "at first sight" the resort to a curfew did not seem to be an anti-democratic measure. "We need to restore calm. It is anti-democratic to burn cars," Vergniol told Ecumenical News International.

In a statement, the Mission Populaire condemned what it described as the scourge of institutional violence such as unemployment and an increase of anti-social behaviour.

"We are in an impasse," the group said. "The wrong responses are being prepared, one of them being the demagogy of a clamp-down, and another the fundamentalism to which sheep without shepherds are vulnerable."

"We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg," said the Rev. Bertrand Bosc who works for the Protestant group in La Duchere, a troubled suburb of Lyon.

The rector of the Paris Mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, who also represents an umbrella grouping for French Muslims, on 7 November called for "the law of the republic to be fully respected". He met Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin two days earlier.

In recent years, established Muslim organizations in troubled city suburbs marked by squalor and exclusion linked to mass unemployment have been facing up to more radical groups which have gained support.

© 1994 - 2006 Ecumenical News International.

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