PARIS, June 23: The day that had been long awaited for national elections scheduled to give French Muslims a unique representational organisation, has come and gone, and France’s Muslim community — the country’s second most important religious one — of more than five million still finds itself unable to give itself a single unitary association capable of representing all of the different tendencies among French Muslims.

French religious affairs minister Nicholas Sarkozy, who is also the country’s newly-appointed interior minister and a man who has affirmed his intention of coming through with a solution to the problem of the French Muslim community — which for the moment is not represented before the French government with the same clout as French Catholics, Protestants and Jews — says he plans to change the voting procedure foreseen to give Muslims a Conseil Francais du Culte Musulman (CFCM), a National Council of French Muslims.

The new solution indeed will attempt to play down the growing importance of such organisations as the UOIF (Union des Organisations de l’Islam Francais), considered as “close” to Islamic fundamentalism, and allow Muslim electors to vote not for such organisations as the UOIF, but rather for religious personalities or places of worship, a solution that has been supported by two of the country’s more moderate Islamic leaders, Dalil Boubakeur, the Rector of the Grande Mosquee de Paris, and Soheib Bencheikh, an increasingly popular Imam based in southern France where he’s become known as the Grand Mufti of Marseilles.

Both men are financed by Algeria, and are considered as politically close to newly-reelected French head of state Jacques Chirac, who has expressed repeatedly his gratitude to the two community leaders for having supported him at a time when his re-election was in serious doubt.

During a stormy two-hour meeting Thursday last, Sarkozy had let it be known that in order to finally bring about a solution to a conflict that has lasted several months — indeed, several years according to some Muslim leaders who say they still haven’t been able to have their points of view listened to by the French government — he was once again “postponing” the elections, scheduled for Sunday (June 23) and that once the elections were finally held — probably this Fall — he would see to it that French Muslims would get at long last their representational council that should assure them the same weight with the French government as the country’s other organised religions.

Thursday’s meeting with a larger number of tendencies of French Muslims than usual had already gotten off to a rocky start, says one observer who was present there, because of a remark made by Sarkozy who let it be known that he personally was opposed to “Islamic fundamentalism” (Integrisme Musulman) and that as long as he was minister, “Islamic fundamentalism would never sit at the table of the Republic.” In his estimation, he added, if he is to build a consensus among French Muslim, it will have to be around positions that are quintessentially non-political and closer to the tendencies of Islam espoused by Rector Boubakeur and “Grand Mufti” Bencheikh.

Those who took the remark most badly were representatives of the UOIF — which claims to represent a good many French Muslims, some say the large majority, with UOIF secretary-general Faoud Alhaoui noting that “if we seem to frighten people in this country it’s largely for a single reason, our wide-ranging success.”

In fact, a national assembly of the UOIF held on May 10 at Le Bourget Airport was able to attract some 100,000 participants from all around France, who appeared eager to take part in the vote scheduled for June 23, but on condition that the man considered their arch-enemy, Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grande Mosquee de Paris, also agree to field candidates in the elections which have once again been postponed, probably to next Fall.

Boubakeur’s contention, like that of Sarkozy, is that the UOIF is “too close” to Islamic fundamentalism, indeed contains among its members “radicals” accused of being supporters of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

Also, notes Boubakeur with obvious pride, he and the Grande Mosquee have long been close to President Jacques Chirac and the Gaullist Union pour la Majorite Presidentielle (UMP) political party, and actively supported Chirac this spring.

Moreover, in Sarkozy’s estimation, “the UOIF wants to establish organisations that support the ‘re-Islamisation’ of French Muslims,” often considered as too liberal and non-religious.

Says Said Zamoun, an apparent adherent of Boubakeur’s cause, “What we need most of all these days is above all that underground mosques be banned once and for all, and that we build real mosques, where all tendencies of Islam will be able to come for worship and where anybody who wants to preach can come to do so, just like in the Christian churches.”

Once that is done, adds Rector Boubakeur, perhaps we’ll be able to attract the young French Muslims who either have totally left behind their religion, or who, like many young French Al Qaeda members presently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, suddenly rediscover their roots, but align themselves on radical forms of Islam that, at least in Boubakeur’s eyes, have nothing to do with the religion to which he says he belongs.