Friday prayers in Paris

(Photo left: Francaisdefrance)Valérie told me the other day that there are streets in paris that get blocked on a Friday night for Friday Prayers. Huh? Where? I asked. Oh, she told me, not in your area, I don't think - the XVIIIè maybe. Whilst on holiday this summer in Morocco she had asked her guide if it happened there too as here in Paris, there are indeed roads blocked off for Friday Prayers. The guides jaw dropped. He said he'd never heard of anything like it in his life and no, it didn't happen anywhere in Morocco.

Well, I've lived in Paris now for almost 16 years and I've got to say that I have never been privy to anyone throwing down a prayer-mat in the middle of the road and sinking to his knees. Not in 16 years. Perhaps, yes, I live in the SW of Paris but I don't stay exclusively here! I move around a lot!!

I forgot about our conversation until I just received this article from CBN. I am utterly amazed. Please, please comment and let me know if it's true or if it's a load of mediatic guff. I honestly can't believe it. Looks like I'm going to have to go out on a Friday evening to see for myself because try as I maight, I cannot imagine roads actually being closed and the street looking like a postcard from Mecca.

CBN News

Saturday, September 04, 2010

By Dale Hurd

PARIS - Friday in Paris. A hidden camera shows streets blocked by huge crowds of Muslim worshippers and enforced by a private security force.

This is all illegal in France: the public worship, the blocked streets, and the private security. But the police have been ordered not to intervene.

It shows that even though some in the French government want to get tough with Muslims and ban the burqa, other parts of the French government continue to give Islam a privileged status.

An ordinary French citizen who has been watching the Islamization of Paris decided that the world needed to see what was happening to his city. He used a hidden camera to start posting videos on YouTube. His life has been threatened and so he uses the alias of "Maxime Lepante. " 

Lepante's View

His camera shows that Muslims "are blocking the streets with barriers. They are praying on the ground. And the inhabitants of this district cannot leave their homes, nor go into their homes during those prayers."

"The Muslims taking over those streets do not have any authorization. They do not go to the police headquarters, so it's completely illegal," he says.

The Muslims in the street have been granted unofficial rights that no Christian group is likely to get under France's Laicite', or secularism law.

"It says people have the right to share any belief they want, any religion," Lepante explained. "But they have to practice at home or in the mosque, synagogues, churches and so on."

Some say Muslims must pray in the street because they need a larger mosque. But Lepante has observed cars coming from other parts of Paris, and he believes it is a weekly display of growing Muslim power.

"They are coming there to show that they can take over some French streets to show that they can conquer a part of the French territory," he said.

France's Islamic Future?

If France faces an Islamic future, a Russian author has already written about it. The novel is called "The Mosque of Notre Dame, 2048," a bestseller in Russia, not in France.

French publisher Jean Robin said the French media ignored the book because it was politically incorrect.

"Islam is seen as the religion of the poor people, so you can't say to the poor people, 'You're wrong,' otherwise, you're a fascist," Robin explained.

The book lays out a dark future when France has become a Muslim nation, and the famous cathedral has been turned into a mosque.

Whether that plot is farfetched depends on whom you ask. Muslims are said to be no more than 10 percent of the French population, although no one knows for sure because French law prohibits population counts by religion.

But the Muslim birthrate is significantly higher than for the native French. Some Muslim men practice polygamy, with each extra wife having children and collecting a welfare check.

"The problem of Islam is more than a problem of numbers," said French philosopher Radu Stoenescu, an Islamic expert who debates Muslim leaders on French TV. "The problem is one of principles. It's an open question. Is Islam an ideology or just a creed?"

"It doesn't matter how many there are," he aded. "The problem is the people who follow Islam; they're somehow in a political party, which has a political agenda, which means basically implementing Sharia and building an Islamic state."

In Denial or Fed Up

From the 1980s until recently, criticizing or opposing Islam was considered a social taboo, and so the government and media effectively helped Islam spread throughout France.

"We were expecting Islam to adapt to France and it is France adapting to Islam," Robin said.

About the burqa controversy, one French Muslim man told a reporter that Europeans should respect Muslim dress. One Parisian woman wearing a headscarf said "the veil is in the Koran" and "we only submit to God and nobody else."

But even if many government elites are in France are in denial over Islam, the people in the streets increasingly are not. Some have become fed up with what they see as the growing Islamization of France.

They've started staging pork and wine "aperitifs," or cocktail parties in the street. They're patriotic demonstrations meant to strike back against Islam.  Another national demonstration is planned for Saturday, Sept. 4. 

A Warning to the West 

The French parliament is expected to debate the burqa law in September. Jean-Francois Cope, president of the Union for a Popular Movement political party, has a warning for the West and for America. 

"We cannot accept the development of such practice because it's not compatible with the life in a modern society, you see," he said. "And this question is not only a French question. You will all have to face this challenge. " ________________________________________________________________

Pork and wine apéro?? That's a bit OTT, innit? Well, after reading that, nothing for it but to go and see for myself... Oh!!! Video after video. Page after page... I am in total shock. Puré! the World News blog says the police know about it and even participate since roads can't be closed without them, after all. This blog has several videos on the illegal 'prayers' and road-blocking going on in the Barbès area of the XVIIIè. You will see a police car blocking off the street, visibly inactive... Here's another couple from the rue Myrha. This post talks about rue des Poissoniers. The blogger went to see for himself and couldn't believe his eyes. This article says that rue Myrha has been 'confiscated by the muslims for their prayers'. And here's an article written by Maxime Lépante himself in Novopress France.

This blog says the same things happens in Puteaux. Is this country of 'laicité' becoming Islamic territory, asks the blogger. I dread to even address the question. Friday evening off I'll trot to Berbès to see for myself because I truly cannot believe it. Check this out to see what's going on in Trappe... Here's more on Berbès which is interesting as all these people are from the mosqué Polonceau. So, why don't they pray in their mosque? Why the route march. My initial thought - maybe mosques in Paris and the suburbs aren't big enough anymore. Silly me! The Institute of Islamic Culture alone has two prayer halls each of 1000m squared...

Someone, please shed some light on this. Whilst I'm not anti-muslim or anti-Islam (great fan of Islamic art and music and my best friend at school was from Pakistan - she came to my church, I went to her mosque for Eid and Jalsa, marriages, etc), it disturbs me greatly to see this happening in a secular country (soit-disant). If it doesn't happen in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, then why here? Why are the police allowing it? Why is Sarkozy not addressing this? I still cannot get over it. I am so stunned I'm sure I'm not even writing coherently... For goodness sake, the burqa is one thing. This is another thing entirely. There are mosques (many of them built from French tax-payers money who aren't muslims), many of them, why not use them?

A comment just now from someone I mentioned it to, "what's so strange about that? If we want it to stop happening then people will have to stop crossing themselves." Huh? I think the point was missed somewhere along the line... I still am astounded, gobsmacked, hors de moi...The only place I see people crossing themselves is in a church. Certainly not in the street.

Comments

[sairj]

Thanks Papa! I feel a great deal better!! :))

[Papa]

Is coming soon on your own street or at a street near you!...

[sairj]

I wouldn't be against it either if it wasn't closing roads...never 'eard the like!!! When Valérie told me, i thought she was making it up!!! And it has all exploded at a time when Sarko is busy deporting the Rroms on the crime lists to howls of xenophobia and racism along with the whole burqa issue... What amazes me is that it really doesn't happen in other countries and there are now enough mosques in Paris to house everyone for their prayers. i'm going to have to go and see for myself. Until then, I still won't believe it.

[Little Me]

Me again. Might have to take back my above post; the other half says there's nothing new about it and it started up as a protest about there not being enough mosques.

Well well.

Doesn't bother me in particular either way - nothing wrong with people praying as fr as I am concerned. Problem is the Muslims will use it to provoke and the anti Muslim scaremongers will use it to stir up more hatred so it is hardly a win-win situation.

So shall print out my above comment and screw it up in a ball and eat my words!

[Little Me]

Hey
Lived in a couple of areas of Paris and suburbs which had high Muslim population, including Barbès for several months, and never saw or heard anything about this.
There's a lot of anti-Muslim media out there, panic stirring about Islam. If this is true it is pretty appalling, but I suspect it might not be completely true. It maybe happens for specific festivals (there are religious parades which take place after all) but have a feeling it might be exaggerated to provoke fear and mistrust.

There again, I left Barbès three years ago, and things might have changed since then. Will be interested to see what you uncover.