On the occasion of this Thursday’s Metropolitan Council, the National Front group submitted a motion requesting that the metropolitan councilors cancel the lease of the Al Fath mosque (“the conquest”) in Nice East, which is located in premises owned by Côte d’Azur Habitat.
This initiative follows the group’s criticism of Christian Estrosi regarding the “close ties that he and his municipality have maintained with the UOIF for years. These ties, from the installation of mosques in municipal premises to the inclusion of radical imams in city bodies, allow us to view with great astonishment his recent statements on the dissolution of this association.”
Christian Estrosi declared his opposition to the Great Mosque of Nice West potentially being led by a movement “advocating Sharia,” which means the application of Islamic law.
Can he then explain why he would want to involve the UOIF in this matter, through Imam Otmane Aissaoui, whose president Amar Lasfar in 1995 called for the recognition of communities by the Republic in order to “apply our own laws to our community”?
*For the record:
The Mayor of Nice convened an exceptional municipal council on Monday, April 25th to oppose the project.
“The prefect’s desire to favor a place of worship funded by foreign funds rather than a nursery that the neighborhood needs, as acknowledged by the investigating commissioner, leads Christian Estrosi to propose strong measures to the Nice municipal council to oppose this decision,” summarizes the city of Nice in a statement on Tuesday.
Letters between Prefect Adolphe Colrat and the mayor, made public by the city hall, confirm that Mr. Estrosi is asking the State representative to sign a declaration of public utility (DUP) to open a nursery at the same address.
The prefect believes that “the mayor’s repeated public statements” against the mosque’s opening could lead an administrative judge to conclude that the DUP is “tainted by misuse of procedure or misuse of power.”
The prefect recently gave his conditional green light to the opening of the En-Nour Institute mosque, whose construction started in July 2012 was completed in November.
He demands that the mosque “in no way depends on foreign influence” and “that its governance clearly fits within the framework of the 1905 law, by incorporating the representative collegiality of the Muslim faith in Nice and the department.”
The mosque has already received a favorable opinion from the security commission to open to the public. It will be able to accommodate some 250 worshippers for prayer and will also offer a restaurant, a library, and classrooms.
