The announcement follows President Emmanuel Macron’s 2020 decision to end the presence of around 300 imams sent by countries such as Algeria, Turkey, and Morocco, and promote the training of imams within France. Macron said the move was designed to combat “foreign influences” on Islam in France, including “Islamist separatism”.

In a letter sent to concerned countries, Darmamin emphasized that after April 1, 2024, imams already in France under this status will no longer be able to maintain their presence.

Existing imams will be required to transition to a different status, and a unique framework will be established from April 1, 2024, allowing religious associations to independently recruit and directly employ imams.

The letter said that the objective is to have these imams receive at least partial training within France.

BFMTV reported that the decision does not impact the presence of foreign imams during Ramadan.

The measure aims to ensure that no imam is paid by a foreign state, of which he is a civil servant or public official.

The announcement by Darmamin has sparked controversy and criticism. Critics argued that the decision to halt the appointment of foreign imams perpetuates a perception of Islamophobia, especially in light of France’s history of controversial policies, such as the ban on wearing hijab in public spaces.

The country has faced scrutiny in recent years for its restrictive measures targeting aspects of Islamic practice.

Source: Morocco World News

Created in 1999 by the Ministry of National Education, Research and Technology, within the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS), the Institute for the Study of Islam and Societies of Muslim world (IISMM) is from 1st September 2016 a Mixed Unit Service (UMS 2000) EHESS / CNRS.

Located in Paris, the Institute strives to coordinate its educational and research actions with other scientific centers in France and abroad.

The IISMM is managed by a management team designated by its scientific council and appointed by the EHESS and the CNRS.

The scientific council of the Institute, appointed for four years, expresses an opinion on the research orientations and proceeds to the evaluation of all the actions undertaken by the IISMM.

The scientific and educational activity is led by a steering committee which meets monthly.

Public conferences

The cycle of public lectures of the IISMM takes place every year, from October to June.

Many French and foreign specialists intervene on subjects chosen to meet the expectations of a large audience, while offering openings on history or on less expected or little publicized aspects.

• 2019-2020 cycle: Islam in globalization
• 2018-2019 Cycle: Pilgrimages to Islam
• 2017-2018 cycle: Africa: societies on the move
• 2016-2017 cycle: Minorities in Islam, Islam in minority
• 2015-2016 cycle: Powers and authorities in Islam
• 2014-2015 cycle: Islams of France, Islams of Europe
• Cycle 2013-2014: Freedom and constraint in Muslim societies
• 2012-2013 cycle: Religion and politics in Islam
• 2011-2012 Cycle: Revolutions in the Muslim World
• 2010-2011 cycle: The Gulf in all its states
• 2009-2010 cycle: Knowledge of Islam

Contacts

• Address: 96 Boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris, France
• Phone: +33 1 53 63 56 05
• Email: iismm.infos@ehess.fr
• Website: http://iismm.ehess.fr

In France, the Grand Great Mosque of Paris and its new rector, Chems Eddine Hafiz, did not wait to set an example for the other 4,000 mosques and places of worship in France. He took the initiative and had the courage to call on all Muslims in France to pray at home to avoid the spread of the virus, citing Qurʼānic verses and prophetic hadiths in his press release. In the latter, he calls on Muslims to be careful and supportive along with their fellow citizens to fight this virus which is threatening the lives of all citizens.

Some imams close to the Muslim Brotherhood have criticized the rector’s decision to cancel prayers and close mosques because the virus had not yet spread widely. Events have proven the correctness of the rector’s decision to listen to President Emmanuel Macron from the start of the crisis.

Most imams see this virus as a divine test for all humanity, including Muslims, to return to the path of righteousness.

Source: AsiaNews.it

The Innovative Training Network programs (ITN) are designed to combine scientific research with an intensive training trajectory for young scholars in order to equip them with the necessary comprehensive knowledge and skills. These researchers work in an inter-sectoral, interdisciplinary and international environment to deepen their knowledge and to find answers to pressing contemporary societal issues. An international consortium of research institutes, universities and non-academic partners has been awarded with a research grant from the Department for Research and Innovation of the European Commission in June 2018.

MIDA is coordinated by the ‘Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique’ (CNRS) in Paris.

The MIDA project rests on the premise that digitization and technological innovations have a tremendous impact on Islam, the effects of which are diverse and ubiquitous. They include first and foremost modes of expression and communication of religious messages and traditions and modes of engagement with society. Digitization and concurrent innovations as they emerged in the past decades belong to the list of comparable fundamental technological transformations in human history such as the invention of paper, printing technology, steam power, electricity and telecommunication, which constituted major upheavals, even if these were not experienced in all societies and by everyone at the same time, in the same way.

It is commonly recognized that the digital revolution will indeed deeply transform human societies, much as the industrial revolution did in the nineteenth century. However, the rapid changes that are currently taking place generate a sense of loss of control and instability among the general public, politicians, journalists, academics, and, not least, among Muslims themselves. The spread of modern digital media and new technologies of communication, production and dissemination, prompts researchers and social actors, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to make sense of, and understand these developments. Consequently, they have shaken up Islam as a field of academic study and have impacted on the ways Islam is to be studied in the future. The specificity of the current digital revolution calls for a re-evaluation of past situations and reflection on future prospects.

Website: https://www.itn-mida.org/

The Mariam mosque, which opened in Copenhagen in early 2016, welcomes worshippers of both sexes; Friday prayers are reserved for women. Berlin’s Ibn Rushd-Goethe ‘liberal’ mosque opened in June 2017. Prayers are held in German in a building belonging to the Protestant community.

Despite positive media coverage, its female imam, Seyran Ates, a well-known lawyer and human rights militant says she has suffered ongoing threats and lives under police protection.

Source: Radio France Internationale (RFI)

The project aimed to raise awareness and insight into the revival of Imam Hussein^(a) movement and held in Italy, Germany, Norway, Austria, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The main purpose of the project was to introduce the Ashura movement and the true face of Islam to the public and non-Muslims in different cities in Europe.

One of the main activities of the union in recent years has been introducing Imam Hussein^(a) to non-Muslims in order to promote and revive his words and ideology. This year, the union distributed bottles of water, roses and informational brochures to non-Muslims in different cities, including London, Bradford, Rome, Turin, Milan, Paris, Bergen, Vienna, Hague, Aachen and Berlin.

These brochures were designed to answer questions about the uprising of Imam Hussein^(a), to demonstrate the true face of Islam and distinguish it from extremism. It is also designed and distributed to confront the wave of Islamophobia in the West and to declare that Islam condemns injustice and terrorism. The brochures are available in indigenous languages (English, Italian, Dutch, French, German, and Norwegian). The brochures also introduced the Arbaeen walk and contained great quotations made by public figures in respect of Imam Hussein^(a).

Volunteers with flags and white scarves with the motto “I am in a battle against injustice. Will you join me?” were offering bottles of water, which symbolizes the thirst of Imam Hussein^(a) and his companions, as well as roses, a symbol of unity and friendship, along with information about the life of Imam Hussein^(a) and Ashura.

It should also be noted that this movement was planned and implemented with the help and support of various Islamic centers in different parts of Europe.

Source: Islam Today Magazine

He proposed creating a new contact group including the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to help handle negotiations with Syria. He didn’t give more details about the exact role and composition of this group, saying the main players of the Syrian crisis would be involved. The group will first meet at the United Nations in New York next month. Macron also announced the organization in Paris of an international summit “against the financing of terrorism” at the beginning of next year.

In Libya, a key country in Africa’s unstable Sahel region, Macron said only a political process will help “eradicating terrorists.” He vowed to help Libya’s neighbors, especially Tunisia, to protect those nations against the risk of destabilization. On French territory, Macron confirmed that he plans to lift a state of emergency that has been in place since deadly November 2015 attacks by Islamic extremists in Paris. At the same time, he pledged to harden permanent security measures to fight Islamic extremism and other threats. The state of emergency expires Nov. 1 … He insisted that taking in refugees “is a question of dignity and loyalty to what we are,” but stressed the importance of sending home illegal migrants who don’t qualify for asylum.

Macron announced he is naming a new ambassador to oversee migration issues and said his government would step up European-African cooperation efforts to stop migrant smuggling.

Source: The Associated Press

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic (June 29, 2017)

Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Religion, Space and Place

This is the first book to explore how religious movements and actors shape and are shaped by aspects of global city dynamics. Theoretically grounded and empirically informed, Religion and the Global City advances discussions in the field of urban religion, and establishes future research directions.

David Garbin and Anna Strhan bring together a wealth of ethnographically rich and vivid case studies in a diversity of urban settings, in both Global North and Global South contexts. These case studies are drawn from both ‘classical’ global cities such as London and Paris, and also from large cosmopolitan metropolises – such as Bangalore, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos, Singapore and Hong Kong – which all constitute, in their own terms, powerful sites within the informational, cultural and moral networked economies of contemporary globalization.

The chapters explore some of the most pressing issues of our times: globalization and the role of global neo-liberal regimes; urban change and in particular the dramatic urbanization of Global South countries; and religious politics and religious revivalism associated, for instance, with transnational Islam or global Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity.

About the Authors:

David Garbin is Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent, UK. His research focuses on the interplay of migration, ethnicity, diaspora, space and religion, in a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Europe, North America, South Asia and Central Africa.

Anna Strhan is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent, UK. Her research explores the interrelations between space, religion, ethics, and values. She is the author of Aliens and Strangers? The Struggle for Coherence in the Everyday Lives of Evangelicals (2015).

Table of Contents:

Introduction, David Garbin (Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Kent, UK) and Anna Strhan (Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Kent, UK)

• Part One: Power, visibility and the politics of space

1. On the Road: Pentecostal Pathways through the Mega-City, Simon Coleman (Chancellor Jackman Professor, University of Toronto, Canada) and Manuel A. Vásquez (Professor of Religion, University of Florida, USA)

2. Urban Planning and Secular Atheism in Shanghai, Beijing, and Singapore, Peter van der Veer (Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, and University Professor at Large, Utrecht University, Netherlands)

3. Occupying the Global City: spatial politics and spiritual warfare among African Pentecostals in Hong Kong, Benjamin Kirby (University of Leeds, UK)

4. Pentecostal Productions of Locality: Urban Risks and Spiritual Protection in Cape Town, Marian Burchardt (Post-doctoral Researcher, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany)

• Part Two: Religious media, publics, and global cultural flows 

5. ‘The Future as news’: Astrology and mediated religion in Global Bangalore, Sahana Udupa (Associate Professor, Central European University, Hungary, and Senior Research Partner, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany)

6. Theorizing Mediatization and Religious Agency in European Global Cities, David Herbert (Professor of Sociology, Kingston University, UK and Professor of Religion and Society, University of Agder, Norway)

7. Godlessness in the Global City, Lois Lee (Lecturer in Secular Studies, University of Kent, UK)

• Part Three: Centralities, peripheries, and religious reterritorialization

8. Marching for Jesus in Paris: Religious territorialization, public space, and the appropriation of centrality in a fragmented city, Yannick Fer (CNRS Researcher, GSRL, France) and Gwendoline Malogne-Fer (post-doctoral research student, GSRL, CNRS-EPHE, France)

9. Transnational religion, multiculturalism, and global suburbs: a case study from Vancouver, Claire Dwyer (Reader in Geography and Co-Director of the Migration Research Unit, University College London, UK)

10. Place And The (Un-)Making Of Religious Peripheries: Weddings Among Kenyan Pentecostals In London,Leslie Fesenmyer (ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellow at COMPAS, University of Oxford, UK)

• Part Four: Global migration, everyday multiculturalism, and religious place-making

11. At Home in The Multicultural City: Islam and Religious Place-Making in Stuttgart, Germany, Petra Kuppinger (Professor of Anthropology, Monmouth College, USA)

12. Religion as ‘urban white noise’ – material practices of everyday religion at the ‘unquiet frontiers’ of the hyper-diverse city, Chris Baker (William Temple Professor of Religion and Public Life, University of Chester, UK and Director of Research for the William Temple Foundation)

13. Between wandering and staying put: Piety and urban mobility among young Somali women in multicultural London, Giulia Liberatore (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at COMPAS and Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College, University of Oxford, UK)

14. Religion, Migration, and the ‘Worlding’ of Urban Daily Life: Local and Transnational Pentecostalism in Rio De Janeiro, Gerda Heck (Assistant Professor of Sociology and Migration and Refugee Studies, American University in Cairo, Egypt) and Stephan Lanz (Senior Lecturer, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Germany)

Reviews

– “This volume opens up the world of urban religions, showing how they connect globalization and urbanization through everyday acts of place-making, co-operation and conviviality. Impressive in its geographical purview and inter-disciplinary ambition, this is an important collection and one that deserves to be read by all those interested in the state of our cities.” (Phil Hubbard, Professor of Urban Studies, King’s College London, UK)

– “By taking on what makes a city truly religiously ‘global’ and what makes a global religion truly urban outside the west, on a variety of scales and in a variety of places, Garbin and Strhan’s edited volume successfully reframes our understanding of the urban religion-globalization nexus.” (Peggy Levitt, Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American Studies and Professor of Sociology, Wellesley College, USA and author of God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape (2007))

Source: Bloomsbury Publishing

The hall had been rented by the Union of Muslim Worship and Cultural Associations of Clichy-la-Garenne (UAMC) since May 2013, but their lease expired in 2016. A court of appeal then ruled against the UAMC, who have been negotiating with the council to keep their old prayer space ever since.

As a result from taking the hall from the UAMC, 300 children now cannot attend Arabic or Islamic history classes formerly being held there.

Local authorities have argued that Muslims can use the new Clichy Muslim Cultural and Worship Center (ACCCMC) that was inaugurated last year. But after visiting the new center – located next to a car pound – last year, UAMC’s supporters say it’s too small and too far away.

“For women, the elderly and children who travel by foot or by public transport in the evenings, it will be difficult for us to get there,” Rabiaa, a member of the UAMC, told.

Protesters have been gathering outside the town hall for ten days now, and have vowed to stay every day until the issue is resolved.

There are an estimated five million Muslims in France, and street prayers are becoming more frequent due to a shortage of mosques. Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has pointed to such outdoor prayers as an example of Muslim encroachment on French secular values.

Source: RT

Officially launched in December, the Foundation for Islam in France has a purely cultural aim, while a separate body linked to it is tasked with raising funds for mosque construction and training of imams. But the selection of a 77-year-old Catholic and former interior minister, Jean-Pierre Chevenement, to head the body has stirred controversy. “We’re happy to have the state create a foundation, but the president must be Muslim and it must be done in collaboration with Muslims; we don’t want it imposed,” said Slimane Nadour, the mosque’s communications director.

But Abdallah Zekri, secretary-general of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, an umbrella body, suggested the mosque was peeved that its head, Dalil Boubakeur, was not tapped as foundation president. “We need a foundation,” he said, suggesting Chevenement played a useful role in fundraising. Others are not so sure. France’s Muslim community, with an estimated 5 million people, is Western Europe’s largest, but it is splintered by ethnic and religious divisions. The country’s strongly secular creed and a spate of terrorist attacks also have helped to feed public wariness about Islam.

Source: Religion News Service (RNS)