Centre-right divided on how to respond to Front National threat

PARIS LETTER: In 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy won back voters from the far right, but recent polls suggest they have now returned to where they came from

JUST BEFORE Friday prayers begin at the cavernous Al Fath mosque on rue Polonceau, the signal is given. A dozen volunteers wearing orange armbands swiftly close off the two narrow roads that intersect at the entrance and cover them kerb-to-kerb with multicoloured plastic mats.

Within minutes, the traffic has stopped and hundreds of men and boys have taken their places on mats stretching 30 metres in two directions. The mosque itself has a capacity of about 1,000, but as usual, there must be twice that number here this sunny afternoon.

A few policemen look on at a discreet distance. The atmosphere is friendly, neighbours greeting each other and children playing games, but it’s hard to miss the weary glances among the faithful as three television crews arrive to film the spectacle.

Their presence is explained by an interview given that morning by interior minister Claude Guéant, who picked up on a favourite theme of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Front National, and said the practice of Muslims praying on the street would have to end.

The issue applies to about a dozen of France’s 2,000 mosques; Al Fath, a ramshackle building in the heart of the multi-ethnic La Goutte d’Or district, is one of the best known.

“We’ve been praying here for years, and as soon as the elections come, the cameras arrive,” says Abou Camarra (29), a lorry driver who hangs back from the congregation. “It’s once a week and it lasts an hour maximum. It’s not the end of the world. When people holds protests, they block the whole of Place de la République.”

Debates over Islam’s place in modern France are nothing new, but rarely has the question so thoroughly dominated the political agenda as it has in recent months.

The coming into force of the face veil ban last week coincided with a debate within President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party on Islam and laïcité, or secularism, an initiative that has split the party’s senior ranks and revealed an ideological tussle over the direction of the mainstream right.

Initiated by UMP leader Jean- François Copé with Sarkozy’s blessing, the internal debate, Copé said, was conceived as a “controversial but necessary” attempt to encourage a specifically French form of Islam that sits with the social and cultural norms of the society.

The debate has been ridiculed by the Socialist Party and the Front National, while leaders of France’s six biggest religions warned it risked damaging the “precious achievement” of secularism, in which no religion should be singled out. Prime minister François Fillon openly refused to take part, while foreign minister Alain Juppé also made clear his unease with the idea.

The debate has resulted in 26 proposals, ranging from ideas on praying in the street to halal meat in school canteens. A law to prohibit citizens rejecting a public service employee on grounds of sex would prevent women from refusing to be treated by a male doctor.

The split within the UMP hinges on how the party should respond to the FN’s rise.

Under Marine Le Pen, the far- right party has managed to refashion itself with a new image and a new vocabulary. Whereas Jean-Marie Le Pen’s reference points were the second World War and the loss of Algeria, his daughter, appropriating the language of the left, talks about laïcité and jobs.

Polling data from recent cantonal elections show the party is broadening its appeal beyond its traditional strongholds.

Within the UMP, the camp represented by Fillon and Juppé believes the party should focus on people’s biggest concerns (unemployment and living standards) and that putting Islam and immigration centre-stage only helps the Front National.

Copé and Sarkozy, who counts among his advisers the former editor of a far-right magazine, believe the FN’s themes must be co-opted by the mainstream.

Sarkozy owed his victory in 2007 to the skilful execution of a two-pronged strategy: winning back the soft FN voters who had gradually moved away from the UMP, while at the same time securing the support of pro- business centrist parties attracted to his reformist rhetoric.

Recent polling shows however that those FN voters have again abandoned the UMP and that the trend has grown more pronounced since Marine Le Pen succeeded her father in January.

More worrying still, the UMP’s centre ground seems to be falling away. The prominent centrist leader Jean-Louis Borloo resigned from the UMP last week and indicated he planned to stand against Sarkozy next year. Two others are considering following suit.

If Sarkozy qualifies for the second round of the presidential election, the centrists will undoubtedly return to the fold, but it’s a measure of the political climate that not everyone is taking his place in the second round for granted.

When a polling company recently found that Le Pen could beat Sarkozy into third place in next year’s election, politicians on the right were shocked and demanded that the pollsters adjust their methodology and try again. They did, but the results were the same.