Free Republic

French authorities will stop Muslims from praying in a street north of Paris, the country’s interior minister said on Sunday, after a series of protests by lawmakers and locals over what they view as an unacceptable use of public space. “They will not have prayers on the street; we will prevent street praying,” Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told Questions Politics (Franceinfo, France Inter, Le Monde). Prayers in the street have taken place every Friday in the multiethnic suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne since March to protest the closure of a popular local mosque that had operated in a government building but since...

A French mayor and dozens of other MPs and elected councilors from around the Paris region sang the Marseillaise on Friday as they marched towards around 200 Muslim worshipers in a bid to stop them praying in the street. The standoff, which was caught in several video clips, took place in the Paris suburb of Clichy on Friday afternoon. The local right-wing mayor, Rémi Muzeau, led the march after growing infuriated by the presence of hundreds of Muslim worshipers praying on the town’s market square every Friday for the past nine months. Images relayed from the scene near Clichy Town...

"This is the beginning of the war!" a French Muslim boy called out in the middle of the riots in Le Blanc Mesnil, just north of Paris. But is it? Or was the war really going on already? Few Americans have heard of him, but in Europe, more and more are becoming familiar with the name – and the ideas – of Dyab Abou Jahjah, founder of the now-international Arab European League (AEL) and the Muslim Democratic Party. Handsome, charismatic, well-educated, and multilingual, he has the perfect makings of a political leader, or perhaps better said, a man poised to...