PARIS, May 11: In a front page special report that appears in its latest issue, France’s leading intellectual daily Le Monde has condemned the growing phenomenon of anti-Islamic feeling in France, sounding a warning that something should be done soon before it is too late.

According to the special report - which is apparently the first time in recent history that a major French daily has chosen to highlight the problem of Islamophobia - a package containing a bomb sent to a mosque blew up in the hands of a postal employee only last month.

According to the Le Monde special report, which is signed by Xavier Ternisien, “It’s not useless to recall that Muslims (in France) remain the principal victims of a petty brand of everyday racism.”

The Le Monde analyst thinks the lack of press interest in incidents against Muslims is because they are apparently fewer in number. But, notes the analysis, this perception is wrong.

According to Rachid Nekkaz, a spokesman for an organizatrion representing French Muslims, there had been a dozen major cases of attacks against mosques in recent weeks, but the number was underestimated for a number of reasons.

Firstly, unlike the Jews, French Muslim don’t yet have a representative institution to register their complaints and actively investigate the incidents.

Secondly, most French mosques are run by first-generation Muslims, most of them from North African countries, who do not have French nationality. For this reason they are much less inclined to complain about the many incidents of racial abuse.