Exit the CFCM, make way for the Forif! This Saturday, February 5, an event will take place in Paris that will leave public opinion indifferent, but that representatives of the Muslim faith, politicians and some other actors in the sphere of Islam in France will follow with the greatest attention. On the occasion of a meeting with great fanfare at the Palais d’Iéna in Paris, the executive intends to ratify the disappearance of the French Council for Muslim Worship (CFCM) as the official interlocutor of the public authorities. And bring to the baptismal font, a new tool, the Forum for Islam in France (Forif). Behind the change of acronym, hides a desire to break with the past and the promotion of an Islam independent of countries like Algeria, Morocco or Turkey. A revolution desired by the executive but which leaves many observers doubtful about its legitimacy and its usefulness.
The CFCM was born in 2003, by the will of Nicolas Sarkozy who took up an idea of Jean-Pierre Chevènement. The ambition of the one who was then Minister of the Interior and Religious Affairs? Having, like other religions, Muslim interlocutors with whom to dialogue. Problem, in recent months, the eight national federations or representative of currents of Islam that make up the CFCM are engaged in a fierce power struggle that has reduced its effectiveness to nothing. To the point that in mid-December, Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, said on RTL: “The CFCM, for the public authorities, for the French Republic, no longer exists”.
But it is not enough to kill the CFCM or rather lead it to self-dissolve, which it has the greatest difficulty in doing, it is necessary to find a substitute interlocutor. If only to set up training or certification for imams officiating in France or to designate chaplains able to intervene in prisons, hospitals and the army. But the executive no longer wants a body linked to consular Islam, with influence from abroad. In particular, he programmed the disappearance of seconded imams in 2024 and introduced greater transparency in terms of funding in the law on separatism. Finally, he does not want an Islam that is too institutional and is betting on representatives in the field. But he cannot either build a representation of Islam in France alone in his corner, he who defends French secularism and is not supposed to deal with the internal organization of religions.
Neither official structure since it has no legal existence, simple new “dialogue format”, the Forif, which will be held for the first time on Saturday, is the result of these contradictory ambitions. The day’s program bears witness to this: the morning will be devoted to working groups, made up of around a hundred people from the field and qualified personalities, followed by a plenary session, the afternoon ending with an intervention by Gerald Darmanin. The whole being the emanation of the departmental meetings which were held last spring under the aegis of the prefects. Four themes were then identified: imams, the application of the separatist law, chaplaincies and securing places of worship and anti-Muslim acts. A pool of 200 people was formed to continue working, two meetings were held in January and summaries were written to feed the meeting on Saturday.
But the Forif project has several weaknesses. First among them, the representativeness of its members. The executive has often highlighted the low representativeness of the CFCM, recalling that in the last elections, only a thousand mosques out of the 2,600 to 2,800 existing places of worship had participated. Forif is not the result of an electoral process because the constitution of the body of voters and its legitimacy could have given rise to endless debate. But the solution adopted is no more convincing: some of the delegates were appointed by the departmental associations, but others by the prefects themselves when there was disagreement in the local authorities. The criterion ? That these people seemed to have things to say on one of the four working themes.
The heartbreaks of the CFCM got the better of its existence. Here, Mohammed Moussaoui (2G), its president, leaving the Elysée Palace on January 18, 2021.
afp.com/Ludovic MARIN
Their legitimacy risks being all the more questioned as some of the participants are keen to remain discreet and have asked that their names not be made public. Even the appointment of rapporteurs for Saturday’s sessions – one or two per working group – proved to be complicated. Therefore, what weight can their word and their choices have on the whole of the Muslim community? The consensus is all the less obvious since the State assumes that it has invited only the profiles who are ready to discuss, and not “those who will take their orders elsewhere”, which de facto leaves the most vulnerable profiles at the door. the most critical or the most extreme that could be tempted tomorrow to destabilize the whole.
Finally, Saturday’s Forif will not settle any of the most important questions. Admittedly, it is envisaged to create a religious authority for the appointment of chaplains, but nothing is said about its future composition, nor about how to give it enough credibility to avoid new quarrels, such as those which, in the past, resulted in the designation of competing chaplains for the same location. The same difficulty will eventually arise for the certification of imams. Finally, deemed too conflicting, the issue of funding has been left aside for the time being. The choice was made to define the needs before talking about money, at the risk of not deciding the only real subject.
Since the Forif has no legal existence, nor “a leader”, sources familiar with the matter insist, the question arises of the moral authority capable, tomorrow, of settling a dispute or defending a position. common to all believers. How to prevent divergent points of view from appearing? There are countless unanswered questions: what happens between two Forif annual meetings? What door can you knock on? Some point to the risk of seeing the power of the Great Mosque of Paris strengthen since it will be one of the rare places identified by believers and they will naturally turn to it in the event of theological or administrative difficulty.
On the government side, we are aware that the proposed solution is not perfect, but we are walking on eggshells, trying to stimulate without ordering, guiding without doing “in the place of” in the name of secularism. However, there is urgency as simple, not to say simplistic, messages are deployed on social networks, very clearly influenced by foreign powers, in particular by Saudi Arabia. These videos heckle and compete with “real” imams, who regularly express their dismay and their inability to counter this phenomenon. A crucial question that cannot simply be resolved by “an exchange of good practices”, at an irregular pace, between actors in the field, however good will they may be. But no doubt it was urgent not to leave the impression of a great void after announcing the death of the CFCM.