Prime Minister Francois Fillon urged France's Muslims on Monday to reject full-face veils as a sectarian representation of Islam, a week before parliament debates a law banning burqas and niqabs in public.
| "You should stand in the front line against this hijacking of the religious message ... it's up to you to make intelligence triumph over obscurantism and tolerance over intolerance." |
Inaugurating a mosque in a northwestern Paris suburb, he said French Muslims should combat a tiny radical minority using face veils as a way to combat the integration of a tolerant Islam that respects the separation of church and state.
"The Islam of France, the Islam you practice daily, has nothing to do with this caricature that dims the lights of your faith," Fillon, the most senior French politician to inaugurate a mosque in decades, said to applause from the crowd.
"You should stand in the front line against this hijacking of the religious message ... it's up to you to make intelligence triumph over obscurantism and tolerance over intolerance."
France's five-million strong Muslim community, the largest in Europe, has felt increasingly sidelined in the past year as President Nicolas Sarkozy's government led a public debate over national identity and decided to ban full face veils.
As Fillon spoke, a woman in the western city of Nantes was on trial for driving while wearing a niqab. Police had fined her for wearing a garment that blocked her lateral vision, and the case went to court when she and her husband challenged it. |