Source : OnIslam & Newspapers / 9 Mar 2013

Being an example of the tensions surrounding France’s growing Muslim minority, the Great Mosque of Strasbourg has become a mixing place for once-wary French to meet their Muslim neighbors.

“From the very beginning, we wanted to be open to the people around us,”Said Aalla, a Strasbourg jurist who is president of the mosque’s governing council, told The Washington Post.

Source : OnIslam / 14 Dec 2012

Seeking to preserve its secular nature, the French government has enacted a new policy to deport foreign-born imams and disband faith-based groups if they are found to suffer “religious pathology”.

"The aim is not to combat opinions by force, but to detect and understand when an opinion turns into a potentially violent and criminal excess," Interior Minister Manuel Valls told a press conference cited by Reuters.

By Elaine Ganley | AP | 1 May 2012

They are France’s millions-strong minority with a voice that usually falls silent at election time. But this year, there is a special new effort to mobilize French Muslims to speak up at the ballot box in Sunday’s presidential race — amid a surge of Islam-bashing among the French right.