Monday - November 30, 2009

In Marseille, unease over mosque project. French are not too happy but helpless to fend off invasion

Polls had indicated before Sunday vote in Switzerland, that the majority would vote AGAINST the right leaning initiative to ban further building of ....

Switzerland voted on Sunday to ban the construction of new minarets, disappointing the country’s Muslims but making those who proposed the nationwide referendum rejoice at its results.

A total of 57.5% of eligible voters and 22 out of 26 cantons backed the initiative aimed at stopping “Islamization of Switzerland” put forward by the rightist Swiss People’s Party (SVP) that the government and parliament had rejected; those opposing the ban said they could go to the Strasbourg court.
THE REST IS HERE.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports that there may well be a muslime backlash against that vote.  Sure. Heaven forbid that the natives who belong there and who go out and vote should get their way.  And the vote in Switzerland just goes to show how far out of touch the people who RULE and the media are, with the average citizen. All the polls said it would fail.  But not liking the vote by the citizens, the govt. is going to appeal to a European court.  So much for the idea that folks can have a say about their own country.  The rulers don’t like the way a vote goes, then see what they can do to nullify it. 

As you can see here, the French aren’t exactly thrilled over what’s happening to their country either. But the muslim steamroller keeps going.

Plans stoke debate about identity and assimilation in French city with growing number of Muslim immigrants

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service

MARSEILLE, FRANCE—Notre Dame de la Garde, an elegant Roman Catholic basilica, has stood for 150 years on a promontory just south of Marseille’s Old Port, looking down protectively as fishermen push out to the sea and symbolizing the irrepressible spirit of this fabled Mediterranean city.

But a new and very different symbol is scheduled to rise soon on another promontory, this one on the north side of the Old Port. It is the $30 million Grand Mosque of Marseille, a place for the metropolitan region’s more than 200,000 Muslims to gather and worship and a dramatic reminder of the Islamic heritage that is grafting itself onto France’s cultural landscape.

The mosque, which at 92,500 square feet will be France’s largest, has become an emblem for the many native French people who feel uncomfortable with an immigrant population that, as its numbers rise, increasingly seeks to live by its own religious and cultural rules rather than assimilate into France’s long Christian tradition.

The strain is particularly intense in Marseille, where kebab shops line the once-elegant Canebiere Avenue and North African Arabic seems as prevalent as French on the sunny cafe terraces where residents traditionally do their business and take their aperitifs. But Marseille is not alone; across the wealthy countries of Western Europe, growing communities of Muslim immigrants have created unease among native populations by seeking to affirm their own identities—by building mosques, for instance, or wearing veils in the street.

Polls indicate that the measure will be defeated, but it has underlined the distress of many Swiss people who fear minarets may join cowbells as symbols of their culture.

Similar fears were stoked in Marseille two weeks ago when youths of North African origin twice poured into the streets, some of them destroying cars and boats docked in the Old Port, to vent their feelings over Algeria’s mixed luck in a pair of qualifying matches for the World Cup soccer tournament. France’s team, which qualified with narrow victories over Ireland, did not seem to interest them as passionately, an anomaly described by Immigration Minister Eric Besson as “integration troubles.”

“We must demand that those youths choose,” said Marine Le Pen, vice president of the right-wing National Front, headed by her father, former presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. “You cannot have two nations in your heart, two allegiances.”

Ronald Perdomo, a right-wing lawyer and Marseille politician, called the planned mosque a “cathedral mosque” designed to be a “symbol of non-assimilation” that will balance off Notre Dame de la Garde and send a message from its 75-foot-high minaret that Marseille’s Muslim residents are “imposing their religious norms.”

After failing in two lawsuits to block a construction permit for the mosque, Perdomo’s Regional Front and three other rightist groups filed a new suit Tuesday alleging that Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin sidestepped building regulations in granting the permit and thus violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

“It is not reasonable to make exceptions to the law on the pretext that there are a large number of Muslims in France,” Perdomo said in an interview.

A native French retiree polishing his car near where work on the mosque is scheduled to begin in April lamented the project. But the mosque, he said, is only part of what Muslim immigrants have done to Marseille in recent years. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, he said he did not want to be racist, “but you have to, when you see what is happening.”

“MARSEILLE IS FINISHED,” HE ADDED, BEFORE TURNING TO A GAME OF PETANQUE.

“THERE IS NOTHING LEFT BUT BLACKS AND ARABS.”

WAPOST

Posted by peiper     on 11/30/2009 at 06:59 AM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens and Immigration • International • RoPMA • Terrorists •  
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