On a mat and a prayer. A new debate reflects strains over the place of Islam in France

WELL before the start of Friday prayers, rolls of mats tied with string are waiting propped against the kerb. Perched on a plastic table on the pavement outside the Al-Fath mosque, a loudspeaker is ready to broadcast prayers to the street. As the faithful stream in from the Métro station in this grim stretch of Paris’s 18th arrondissement, past shops selling Algerian football shirts and green-and-gold woven cloth from Togo, policemen guard roads that have been closed to traffic. When the prayers begin, the streets are packed with hundreds of worshippers kneeling on mats. The scene has become a symbol in a heated debate over efforts to reconcile an assertive Islam with France’s secular tradition.

Of 2,000 mosques and prayer rooms in France, weekly prayers overflow on to the streets in only a dozen places, mostly in Paris and Marseille. Home to Europe’s biggest Muslim minority (some 5m), France objects because of its strict secularism or laïcité. This doctrine bars religion from public life. In 2004 cross-party backing pushed through a law that outlaws the headscarf (and other religious symbols) in public schools. Next week a ban on the face-covering veil comes into force.

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party has raised the temperature by holding a controversial debate on laïcité. It wants 26 measures to clarify the application of the 1905 law. These include stopping pupils from skipping classes on compulsory bits of the curriculum (such as the Holocaust) or patients refusing on religious grounds to see a male doctor. The party also wants foreign donors to declare gifts to mosques in France, and to bring in public loan guarantees or long-term leases for mosque-building, to get worshippers off the streets.

Jean-François Copé, the UMP leader, says he is responding to genuine problems, for teachers or doctors, which the snug Paris elite underestimates. He invited representatives of other religions to the debate. He wants to reaffirm secular principles to send a message to hard-line Islamists. Others, however, see the debate as an attempt to stigmatise Muslims for electoral ends, since the problems touch only Islam. Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the French Council for the Muslim Faith, refused to join the UMP debate. Even François Fillon, the prime minister, boycotted it.

The UMP is divided over how far to press the issue. Many would prefer to talk of more urgent matters like jobs. Others say they cannot leave the field to Marine Le Pen, the far-right National Front leader, who has compared street prayers to the Nazi occupation. Several polls suggest she could beat Mr Sarkozy in the first round of next year’s presidential election. Mr Sarkozy backed the debate and seems happy to keep it in the headlines. Earlier this year he said multiculturalism had “failed”, that immigrants needed to “melt” into French society, and that “we do not want ostentatious prayers in the street in France.”

Back in the 18th arrondissement, not far from the cobbled streets of Montmartre, France’s secular principles seem neater in theory than in practice. Each week, policemen allow the streets to be shut for outdoor prayers. They stand by as mosque officials put up plastic tape to separate pedestrians from worshippers. Some residents see this as a provocation. Daniel Vaillant, the local Socialist mayor, calls it pragmatic. “There are worse abuses of the street here, such as prostitution or drug-dealing,” he says. “I’m against prayers in the street; but I’m also against banning them without providing a solution.”

The town hall sees street prayers as a temporary problem of capacity. Two local mosques draw worshippers from afar, often new arrivals to France. They come to pray and pick up supplies in the many ethnic stores, offering such wares as raw goats’ feet, mobile-phone cards and Afro-hair extensions. The local government and the city are spending €22m ($32m) to build a new Islamic cultural centre on two sites, with space for concerts and exhibitions. Muslim associations will use private finance to buy prayer rooms, for €6m.

To purists, this is an outright breach of laïcité. To the town hall, it is the best hope of resolving the problem peacefully, even though one mosque has yet to sign up to the plan. As in other French towns, where the authorities organise sites for ritual slaughter during Eid or create Muslim burial spaces in public cemeteries, local flexibility seems to triumph over rigid national theory. When the new Islamic centres are ready in a year or two, Mr Vaillant promises, “there won’t be any more prayers in the street, and they will give the public space back to citizens.”