By IINA,
Paris : Le Bourget, Europe’s biggest gathering of Muslims, has become the best destination to raise funds to build much-needed mosques for France’s sizable Muslim minority. Le Bourget has become the biggest opportunity for French Muslims to raise money for mosques,” Qaderi told IslamOnline.net holding a sign urging Muslims to donate.Ads and mosque maquettes are decorating the venue of the annual gathering, organized by the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF).
Muslim volunteers seized the conference to drum up financial support for building mosques themselves as they explained to the audience its importance to the Muslim minority.
Qaderi says he came to the gathering to raise fund for a mosque in his southern city of Orleon. “The donations campaign you see at Le Bourget is unmatched during any other gathering,” he said. Themed “Family…Facts and Challenges”, the four-day Le Bourget ends on Sunday, May 11. The gathering has become a fixture in the French Muslim calendar.
Thousands of Muslims flock to the annual gala to meet, attend lectures of intellectuals and scholars, buy the latest in Islamic literature and clothes and vie in contests for the memorization of the Qur’an. This year’s activities brought together a galaxy of intellectuals including chairman of the European Institute for Humanities Sheikh Ahmad Gaballah, Fatwa House Chairman Ounis Guergah and Swiss-based intellectual Tariq Ramadan.
Bilal, a Muslim volunteer from the northwestern port city of San Malo, also came to Le Bourget to raise fund for his city’s mosque. “Donate to help building San Malo mosque, brothers and sisters,” he urged the conference’s audience to donate, carrying a small box to receive the donations. Bilal, who has embraced Islam two years ago, says the mosque project has become a necessity for Muslims in San Malo. “San Malo is a small city of a 160.000 population, including some 200 Muslim families,” he told IOL.
“The place where we pray is a small underground hall that can barely take 15 people. That’s why the mosque has become our community’s main priority.” Activists from the city of Clairmont Veron also came to Le Bourget with the hope that their dream of a mosque will finally become a reality. The city’s residents have long protested establishing a mosque in the city. But after lengthy negotiations, the Muslim community finally succeeded to win the approval for their mosque. “One of the conditions was that the height of the mosque’s minaret be lowered from 27 meters to only 16 meters,” Issa Farouq, a member of the mosque fundraising committee, told IOL.
In France, home to some six to seven million Muslims, there are some 1,700 Muslim places of worship. Only about 400 are stately mosques, according to recent estimates by the Interior Ministry, while most are temporary prayer halls in gymnasiums, unused shops or apartment house basements.