France is changing its face. The churches are emptying. Mosques are multiplying: there are more than 2,800 today. For example, in the medieval priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, the church has disappeared. A mosque has replaced it.
In our cities as well as in our villages, Islamization is progressing under the guise of worship. Some elected officials turn a blind eye. Despite warnings from the Ministry of the Interior, they continue to finance these constructions with public money.
This is not only a fact of society. It is a spiritual and civilizational upheaval. Faced with this profound transformation, Avenir de la Culture is sounding the alarm.
Researcher and TFP member, Atilio Faoro, is the author of Mosques: The Barracks of Islamization. We asked him about his book, which has a circulation of 30,000 copies. It reveals what many suspected. These buildings are not simple places of prayer, but often centers of ideological and community influence.
The interview begins with a provocative question. Why this title?
Atilio Faoro: I didn’t invent this expression. It is from Ziya Gökalp, a Turkish poet: “Minarets are our bayonets, cupolas our helmets, mosques our barracks and believers our soldiers.” Erdogan took up this metaphor in the nineties. It is a perfect example of what the mosque is: a community center that brings together the ummah, the community of believers, with a view to propagating the religion of the prophet. This is why most of them are not just a prayer room. They also include a library, a Koranic school and sometimes even vendor stalls or a gym to attract young people.
Three radical currents, you write, are vying for control of Islamic places of worship in France. What are they?
The oldest is that of the Muslim Brotherhood, represented by the Muslim Association of France (formerly UOIF). “God is our goal, the Prophet our leader, the Koran our constitution, combat our path, death in the service of God our dearest desire,” said Hassan el-Banna, its Egyptian founder. In France, Ahmed Jaballah, founder of the UOIF, has made very worrying remarks. He says, “The UOIF is a two-stage rocket. The first stage is democratic, the second will put an Islamic society into orbit.” The Muslim Brotherhood was recently the subject of an alarming report addressed to the Minister of the Interior: the organization is said to control about 300 places of worship in France.
The second current is Mîlli Görüş, described as a “Turkish fundamentalist Muslim brotherhood” by the Council of State. Very close to President Erdogan, this movement is, according to Le Journal du Dimanche, at the head of 400 Muslim places of worship in France.
Finally, the third current is the Salafist movement. Less structured than the two previous ones, the Salafists are nevertheless experiencing a strong expansion. According to police sources, France had in 2019 about 90 Salafist places of worship out of 2,600 listed, twice as many as in 2010 and five times more than in 2005. Some have even served as airtight passage to jihad.
Are the public authorities involved in the development of new mosques?
That’s right. In Strasbourg, the ecologists in the town hall have voted to allocate a subsidy of 2.5 million euros for the construction of the largest mosque in Europe. As if that were not enough, a municipal official accompanied a delegation to Qatar to request funding. In Metz, the right-wing municipality has offered half a million euros to build a large mosque. In Lyon, the Green mayor inaugurates mosques with great pomp, but refuses to enter the Basilica of Fourvière for the traditional swearing-in of the aldermen. These are just a few examples of a scandalous collaboration, carried out without consulting or informing the French people. According to the essayist Jean-Luc Moreau, “town halls are becoming the first landlords of the Muslim faith.”
You quote Chateaubriand: “Chase out Christianity and you will have Islam”…
Two centuries later, it is clear that he was right: where Christianity fades away—through secularization, cowardice or compromises—Islam takes its place. Today, thousands of churches are threatened with ruin while mosques are multiplying all over France. Is this not the most obvious sign of a change in civilization? If France wants to remain the eldest daughter of the Church and not become the youngest child of Islam, it must react. And quickly.