French imams much in demand

ST. DENIS, France, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Down the street from the battered train station and the African clothing store, the European Institute for Human Sciences shelters big dreams behind its unlikely masthead.

Here, overlooking the gritty backwash of the Seine River, is where Nawal Lachhab learns Arabic. Where supermarket clerk Abdullah Douroire recites his first Koranic verse. And where Maher Madalah dissects the teachings of a faith unquestioned by his Tunisian-born parents.

It is also here, in this working-class Paris suburb, where teachers at this Islamic institute hope to shape a new generation of French imams, or Muslim clerics.

There is no shortage of openings. Half the country's 1,500 mosques and worship houses lack trained imams to lead daily prayers. The rest are almost all staffed by North African and Middle Eastern preachers, with a checkered understanding of France and of its five million, French-speaking Muslims.

"The problem is not that they're foreigners, but that their training hasn't sufficiently prepared them to work in non-Muslim, secular societies," said sociologist Franck Fregosi, who authored a 1997 book on imams in France. "And that explains why these imams don't appear to answer the needs of young Muslims, or the questions they pose."

Training preachers who do isn't easy. Islam is France's second largest religion, after Roman Catholicism. Yet second generation Arabs, Africans and Turks struggle for acceptance in this fiercely secular country, where Islamic religiosity can pass for extremism. Moreover, only a handful of Muslim theology schools exist in France, or elsewhere in Europe.

"Most of our students live in one culture with their parents, and another at school and at work," said Abdesslam Hafidi, the dapper, young director of the St. Denis School.

"Muslims in Europe find themselves faced with a culture that doesn't understand them. They come here because they are searching for their identity."

The country's first imam training center, the institute opened a decade ago as a boarding school in northeastern France, drawing young Muslims from across Europe. It later launched a British spin-off, in Wales. The St. Denis branch opened in January, enrolling 350 mostly Paris-area students.

Five days a week, the institute churns out a rigorous schedule of Koranic studies, religious jurisprudence, Islamic civilization and history. For most students, the four-year imam program often stretches to eight, when Arabic language is added. At the end, administrators say, only about 10 percent graduate as clerics.

"We want to sink our roots into these schools," said the European Institute's president, Boubakeur Haj Amor, as he outlines plans to build a "dynamic" Islam in Europe. "After that, we need to expand and respond to the needs because we get a lot of demands for schools, from Germany, from Eastern Europe."

At the St. Denis School one recent afternoon, almost a dozen young men and women slowly analyze Koranic passages about the prophet Noah, as light fades from a wintry sky. Contradictions are examined and argued. Finally, instructor Ounis Guergah calls it a day.

"I was born in France, I grew up here, I studied French," said 28-year-old nurse, Nawal Lachhab, explaining later why she enrolled. Like other female students, she wears a headscarf and long, loose-fitting clothes. "But there was a point when I wanted to go back to my roots. And I wanted to learn Arabic obviously, for a better understanding of the Koran."

The institute's conservative interpretation of Islam forbids women from becoming imams at local mosques. Nonetheless, Lachhab hopes to teach women-only religious classes.

"My parents are happy," she added. "In fact, they've been pushing me in this direction."

But many French Muslims, locked into grim commutes between housing projects and low paying jobs, define success by secular, elusive criteria -- a university degree, a house, a comfortable government job. Only about 20 percent regularly attend Friday mosque services, according to a September survey by France's IFOP polling agency.

Just over a third describe themselves as practicing Muslims.

And while spirituality appears to be growing, particularly among Muslim youth experts say, few find inspiration from their preachers.

Indeed, many foreign-born clerics have a hard time adapting Sharia laws and fatwas to a European context. Polygamy is obviously banned here. But earning interest from banks -- frowned on in many Muslim countries -- is not. Western divorce and marriage laws, dress codes and work standards, are radically different from norms back home.

"We've had problems with these people who come from the outside -- we call them people from the bled (home country)," said Abdelaziz Chambi, a leading member of the Union of Young Muslims in France. "It's Morocco this, and Tunisia that.

"They'll always present a version of Islam that's flavored by their nationality. But I'm a French citizen, and France is my country."

The government, too, has a stake in developing a "French Islam." Police have kept a close watch on suspected Islamist extremists and fiery preachers since Algerian guerrillas launched a wave of attacks in France during the mid-1990s. Those concerns have heightened since Sept. 11, with the arrests of dozens of alleged Muslim terrorism plotters in France and elsewhere in Europe.

In recent years, French authorities have expelled more than a dozen radical clerics from the country said Alain Billon, special advisor on Islamic affairs for the Interior Ministry.

"The government has generally pretty good relations with the imams that we recognize," Billon said. "But of course, there are ideologues who incite, and we pay a lot of attention to them."

The European Institute, which frankly endorses the fundamentalist doctrine of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, is not considered "as Republican and secular as one could hope," Billon added.

Rather, the preferred face of establishment Islam is presented by Dalil Boubakeur, the urbane rector of the Paris Grand Mosque. A trained dentist, fluent in French and English, Boubakeur opts for suits and ties rather than his native Algerian jellaba. The Islam he eloquently preaches, at interfaith conferences and televised interviews, is a tolerant, Europeanized brand.

"Islam is no longer seen as a means to fight against other things," Boubakeur said in a recent interview. "At the beginning, the community was ill at ease in Europe, because of the economic and social problems, the bad education and the suburban ghettos. Now it truly responds to religious needs, period. Islam is at ease in France."

When the Paris mosque opened its first imam-training center in 1994, former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua was at hand to inaugurate it. But the school soon floundered and closed. This fall, the mosque tried again, enrolling 40 students in its new theology program, partially sponsored by the Algerian government.

But the mosque's students don't reflect an Islam particularly at ease in France. Racial tensions have surged here, since the Sept. 11 strikes on the United States, and many refused to be interviewed. The mosque recently banned photographs as well, citing security concerns.

Among the few students who talked was 28-year old Faisal, whose Yemeni-born parents are delighted with his decision to become imam.

And his friends? Faisal smiled. "Frankly, I have friends that don't understand why I'm doing this," he said. "I have French friends that think I'm going to become a future bin Laden."