Who Said Politicians Aren't Funny

What is truly funny is when non-Muslims try to teach Islam to Muslims.

Some of you may remember how the spokesman of the Islamic Republic of Iran mocked the US Secretary of State Colin Powel when he said “Islam is not incompatible with democracy”. The Iranian fellow said , "US officials' comments on Islam clearly prove they know nothing about Islam and Muslims”.

Now we have the French interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, saying (April 22, 2004) "the country must urgently begin training Muslim clerics in a moderate Islam that respects human rights and the republican code".

Addressing a meeting of local prefects a day after he deported an Algerian imam who was in favor of stoning women, Mr. De Villepin said they should not think twice about expelling any foreign preacher who advocated violence, hatred, racism or human rights abuses.

He said, France had to "face the issue of training imams. I ask you to help the Muslim faith get organized better and more quickly so that a real 'French Islam' can emerge."

“A real French Islam”? And we thought that Islam is the Islam of Muhammad. So in what ways this “real French Islam” differs from the real-real Islam?

Last Wednesday Abdelkader Bouziane, the 52-year-old imam of a Lyon mosque, was deported from France. He said in an interview that the Koran authorized husbands to hit their wives, that polygamy was right, that women were not men's equals and that music was sin. And added, "it is lawful to stone women who are unfaithful to their husbands".

A week later, Yahia Cherif, the imam of Brest in Brittany asked his congregation to "rejoice in the Madrid bombings" that killed 191 people.

France has 5 million Muslims and an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 imams.

The Interior Minister realizes the gravity of the problem. His solution is to create "a real French Islam”. This “frenchized” version of Islam, supposedly does not include wife beating, stoning, hatred of non-Muslims, Jew bashing, violence and terrorism.

That is a noble thought. However I wonder what sacred book are they going to use in lieu of the Quran? Wife beating is a teaching of the Quran. Jihad or what we call Islamic terrorism is also a pillar of Islam. Not obeying the rule of the non-Muslims is also in the Quran. Stoning is also the rule of Sharia. So if the French Islam is not going to have the Quran as its holy book, what book they will use?

I am eagerly waiting to see how this experiment works. If it is successful perhaps we could also create a French Nazism too. All we have to do is replace Mein Kampf with its French version and voilà, we have given birth to a peaceful Nazism.

Abdellah Boussouf, an imam from Strasbourg who is working on a training scheme to be run by France's National Muslim Council said. “Muslim imams in France should have a modern education - ideally a university education in both social sciences and Koranic studies - as the best guarantee of the religion's "harmonious future existence within a modern and secular western state".

That is a wonderful thought. However a word of advise! Do not educate them too much or they may become enlightened and leave Islam altogether.

Dalil Boubakeur, chairman of the Muslim Council and rector of the Paris Grand Mosque, acknowledged it was up to the Muslim community to take responsibility for training "homegrown" imams who were familiar with French life. But he said little would be achieved without state aid.

There is a problem here. France's laws on the separation of church and state prohibit funding of religious institutions.

All France has to do is to deport the Imams that call for violence and require them to practice only with license. The government must regulate this profession. It should be up to the Muslims to comply by the law and pay for training new Imams that would respect the laws of France more than the laws of Islam. Practically the French Muslims have to reinvent a new religion.

The problem with Islam in France is not just the radical imams. One expert on Islam in France, Antoine Sfeir, said radical foreign imams often found an all too willing audience in France's rundown immigrant suburbs. "The kids there already watch Arab stations on satellite TV, with their bloodthirsty slogans and anti-western propaganda," he said. "They've already been totally radicalized."

The above essay is based on this report