Muslims are still waiting for a signature site for large-scale worship, writes RUADHÁN MAC CORMAICin Marseilles
AS THEY wait for Friday prayers to begin, Kamel Abbas (20) and his friend Reda Bounour (31) are taking refuge from the stifling heat on the shaded doorstep of a call shop on Rue du Poids de la Farine, a narrow alleyway near Marseilles’s old port.
Across the street is their local mosque, a nondescript ground-floor unit with darkened windows and nothing but a paper sign to mark it out as a place of worship.
When the muffled call to prayer sounds from a speaker in the hall, the faithful seem to descend on the street out of nowhere. But the room quickly fills to its capacity of about 150, so the rest make do with a sheet of cardboard and kneel down in rows on the street outside.
“It would be better not to be praying on the street,” says Abbas later, the incessant road works and heavy traffic filling the air. “Sometimes it rains, and then in the summer it’s way too hot.”
“They’re all small,” Bounour chips in. “There are some that can’t take more than 70 people.”
A few kilometres to the north, in the St Louis neighbourhood, stands the vast, derelict complex that once housed Marseilles’s biggest abattoir and which has been approved as the site of the grande mosquée, a controversial project under discussion for 25 years.
The peaceful site couldn’t feel further from the noisy clamour of the city. Some old men play pétanque in the shade; cicadas sing loudly from the tall trees.
Inspired by the design of the Taj Mahal, the mosque’s prayer room – big enough for 7,000 people – would be the centrepiece of an “Islamic village” comprising a library, a school, a conference centre and a minaret rising 80ft. It would be the biggest mosque in the country.
Imam Abderrahmane Ghoul, president of the association behind the project, says the mosque is long overdue in a city where Muslims pray in 62 small halls – many of them makeshift shops, garages and basements. But he also stresses its symbolic value.
“Do you think it’s right a city like Marseilles, a major Mediterranean port, doesn’t have a mosque worthy of the name?” he asks.
“It’s the second-biggest city in France, with more than 230,000 Muslims.”
Ghoul insists construction will begin in late October, but not everyone shares his confidence.
The estimated cost of the project stands at €22 million, with no more than 30 per cent to be raised through foreign governments – a clause inserted in the deal with city hall to prevent the project being controlled by any single Muslim state. But rumours are rife in Marseilles that the association is far from reaching its funding target.
Speculation recently surfaced about divisions within the association’s steering group over control by foreign states after the long-time president was replaced by Ghoul and his allies. Those close to the ousted president say Ghoul wanted greater involvement for Morocco, and that his assumption of power could jeopardise Algeria’s lucrative involvement.
Ghoul rejects the claims. He has just returned from Algeria, he says, where President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s officials “assured me that we had the official participation of Algeria”.
As well as Morocco and Algeria, financial commitments have also been made by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey: “We have serious promises, so all it requires now is for our donors to take the initiative. Once the first country does so, the others will follow.”
The grande mosquée has the full support of all the city’s mainstream parties, but the far-right National Front (FN) is firmly opposed and has already taken two legal challenges against it.
Sitting in the FN headquarters in central Marseilles, regional councillor Stéphane Ravier proudly points to the party’s new poster on the wall: it shows an Algerian flag being pulled down to reveal the French tricolour, and underneath it the slogan “This is France”.
“It’s more than a symbol,” Ravier says of the mosque. “It’s a marker of Islam’s conquest of France. There’s a takeover and an advance of Islam in our country that we, as nationalists and patriots, cannot accept.”
He believes Muslims in France, “a land of terroir and clock towers”, should practice their religion in a “discreet and courteous” way. Instead, he says, La Canebière, one of the city’s principal boulevards, has become “a Muslim street” and you’re more likely to see an Algerian flag at the local stadium than the tricolour. “It’s clear that the grande mosquée doesn’t represent a final point, but another step along the way.”
On the streets, opinion is divided on whether St Louis will ever have its mosque. Some profess cheerful optimism; others offer weary shrugs. “Insh’Allah,” says Kamel Abbas, then pauses. “But even if it’s not built for us, it will be there for our kids.”