Paris ban on Muslim street prayers comes into effect

hardy hadry har har...so muslims whats its like to have the shoe on the other foot for a change..lets see how you re-act when your rights as a group are stripped bit by bit



A ban on saying prayers in the street, a practice by French Muslims unable to find space in mosques, has come into effect in the capital, Paris.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant has offered believers the use of a disused fire brigade barracks instead.

The phenomenon of street prayers, which see Muslims spreading mats on footpaths, became a political issue after far right protests.

France is home to the biggest Muslim minority in Western Europe.

By some estimates, as many as six million French people, or just under 10% of the population, are Muslims, with origins in France's former North African colonies.

Their integration has been a source of political debate in recent years, and earlier this year France became the first EU state to ban the wearing of the Islamic veil in public.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14945467


Muslims caught praying on the streets of Paris face arrest in tough new law

Muslims praying while sprawled on the streets of Paris face arrest under a strict new law brought in today.

French interior minister Claude Gueant said the hundreds of prostrate worshippers 'hurt the sensitivities of many of our fellow citizens'.

Muslim men claim they have been forced into roads and alleyways to complete their daily prayers because of a lack of mosques in the French capital.

But Mr Gueant, a strict right-winger who wants to uphold France's secularity, said that the new law would be spread to other French cities, including Lyon and Marseilles, where thousands of Muslims live.

He said: 'My vigilance will be unflinching for the law to be applied.

'Praying in the street is not dignified for religious practice and violates the principles of secularism.

'All Muslim leaders are in agreement.'
But Sheikh Mohamed Salah Hamza, leader of a mosque in the north of Paris, said the government was treating Muslims like 'cattle' by stopping them from praying in the street.


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