The Minister of Cults declined the invitation to share the traditional breakdown of Ramadan fasting at the Great Mosque in Paris. A decision motivated by secularism, but which questions with regard to previous events.
Bruno Retailleau puts an end to a tradition. The Minister of the Interior and Cults will not participate in a breakdown of Ramadan fasting at the Great Mosque in Paris or in another Muslim institution. The tenant of the Ministry of Place Beauvau declined the invitation to participate in the Iftar, the moment in which practicing Muslims put an end to the daily fast, sent by the institution on Tuesday March 18 according to the information of his entourage Franceinfo.
Few Ministers of cults have refused to participate in such a moment. Especially since Bruno Retailleau did not refuse a single invitation to share the Iftar, but about twenty. His decision therefore does not seem to be linked to timetable problems. The minister’s absence from the fasting evening of the fast organized by the Great Mosque of Paris is also not linked to conflicting relations between France and Algeria, a country whose religious institution would be close, according to those around him. Bruno Retailleau justifies his choice by refusing to participate in a dinner which is connoted religiously, respect for secularism obliges according to him.
The principle of secularism effectively implies the neutrality of the State and its representatives in the face of different religious denominations. The refusal to take part in a “religious practice”, whatever it is, therefore seems legitimate. But in this case the sharing of Iftar does not enter this case, according to Franck Fregosi, researcher at the CNRS and author of Thinking about Islam in secularismwho explains on Franceinfo That the invitation in question does not relate to a prayer, but to a convivial meal which has “become, for decades, a moment of official meeting, with the referents of worship”.
“Religious” and not “institutional”?
Secularism, if it imposes a separation between the State and religions, does not imply the absence of any relationship with religious institutions. Several presidents of the Republic and ministers attended dinners with the representatives of Jewish, Christian and Muslim cults.
So why refuse the invitation of the Great Mosque in Paris? Because there is, according to the Minister’s entourage to Franceinfoa “difference” between the moments which fall under the religious rite and those which come from the institutional. And to avoid criticism on a difference in treatments between cults, the relatives of Bruno Retailleau add that the latter will not participate “in the Mass of the Good Friday”, without mentioning the other cases previously cited.
Except that as Franceinfo recalls, Bruno Retailleau went well, as minister at Pope Francis Mass in Ajaccio in December 2024, a religious office which had nothing political but which was a denominational event. Bruno Retailleau has also already shared a dinner with the members of the Representative Council of the Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF).
Would the Minister of the Interior have a conception of secularism with variable geometry? If Bruno Retailleau seems to be an end to a very strict respect for secularism, in 2014, the one who was then president of the General Council of Vendée denounced in the columns of JDD A “Laïcard fundamentalism” which had prompted the ban on a crèche within its general council. The Minister then defended the presence of a crèche in the establishment, despite his obvious religious and Catholic character. “Secularism protects the cohabitation of different religions and those who do not believe it. The crèche as other symbols have left this space of the religious to register in the cultural tradition”, then defended Bruno Retaileau. But can we not say the same about the sharing of the Iftar?