One French Muslim Perspective: Dalil Boubakeur

PARIS -- He was born in Algeria, heads the main mosque of Paris and is the most prominent Muslim in a predominantly Catholic country. But Dalil Boubakeur, president of France's officially sanctioned Muslim Council, can sound Frencher than the French.

"I am not in favor of multiculturalism," Boubakeur, 65, said recently at his ornate office at the mosque, a soaring structure surrounding a mosaic-lined courtyard on the Left Bank. In a secular country like France, he added matter- of-factly, "there is only one culture: French culture."

This may not play well with the entire five-million-member Muslim community here. But Boubakeur shrugs off criticism, explaining that he considers himself a forerunner of a modern, liberal, apolitical Islam - an Islam he reckons will take root this century in Europe and beyond.

"When you're ahead, you are lonely," he said. "I was born a Muslim, I am of French culture and I love Europe. There is no contradiction."

. . . But Boubakeur does not believe in a clash of civilizations pitting Islam against the West. Rather, he sees a battle playing out among European Muslims, between those willing to adopt Western values and those hostile to assimilation.

. . . But many French Muslims, most of whom are descendants of working- class immigrants, feel resentment toward a man they say is not one of them. They say that Boubakeur, who has never lived in an immigrant suburb and rarely visits one, does not understand their plight and that he has bought into a Republican vision of integration that has left them in limbo between formal equality and de facto discrimination.

"He is a good person, but he is the antithesis of a Muslim representative," said Mohammed Henniche, leader of the Union of Muslim Associations in the Seine-Saint-Denis district north of Paris, which is home to many families of North African origin and was a hot spot in last year's riots. "He speaks the language of the French elites, not that of ordinary Muslims. The youth in the suburbs don't understand him, and he does not understand them."

Boubakeur replies that his acceptance of French values is the wave of the future.

"That for me is being a modern man," he said, "and that is the message I would like to pass on to my Muslim brothers and sisters. I want them to adapt European culture without fear and to embrace it wholeheartedly."