May 2, 2003	Friday	Safar 29, 1424

PARIS: In an important declaration on the future of Islam in France, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has declared not only his unflinching support for French Muslims, he’s also said that the French will just have to accept Islam in all of its various manifestations.

“If you decide that Islam is incompatible in France with the values of our Republic,” noted Mr Sarkozy, “then what do you do with the five million Muslims who reside in France? Do you expel them, do you force them to convert themselves, do you ask them not to practice their religion?”

Mr Sarkozy, reacting to recent criticism of the CFCM (Conseil francais du culte musulman), the single representative organism for French Muslims, said that “you just can’t accept a situation where you have, on one side, those who have the right to live their faith, and, on the other, those who are forbidden to do so.”

“Let’s not forget that Islam is the country’s second most important religion, and that the time had come for it to have the right to dispose of its own representative organism capable not only of representing its interests before the French government, but also of engaging itself in a dialogue with the country’s other religions.”

Mr Sarkozy noted that members of other Muslim organization “had just as much right” to belong to the CFCM, and exist in France, as did other religions.