Sarkozy signs petition to protect empty churches from conversion to mosques

A proposal to use empty churches as mosques has drawn strong opposition in France, with a poll showing more than two-thirds against it and former president Nicolas Sarkozy signing an appeal entitled: "Do not touch my church".

A recent poll found that more than two-thirds of French are against a proposal to use empty churches as mosques AFP

Sarkozy joins a list of signatories that include essayist Eric Zemmour, philosopher Alain Finkielkraut and former junior minister for youth and community life Jeannette Bougrab, according to French right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles which publishes the poll results and the petition as its cover story in the issue to hit newsstands Wednesday.

The idea to repurpose unused churches was raised by Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, in an interview last month with Europe 1.

"This is a delicate issue, but why not," he said.

More than 67% of French are opposed to the suggestion, and are two and a half times more likely to say "totally opposed" than "somewhat opposed", according to a survey by the French Institute of Public Opinion (Ifop).

"Even if France is deeply de-Christianised since the 1960s, there is a real commitment … to the Christian roots and their symbols," Jerome Fourquet, Ifop’s director of opinion and strategy, told the magazine.

According to one of the latest polls on religion by the institute, only 6% of respondents in 2012 said they attended Mass at least every Sunday, compared with 35% in 1962. At that time less than a quarter of those polled said they never go to church, compared with 46% in the more recent survey. 

The former head of state Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Edouard Balladur, a former prime minister, also responded to Boubakeur's proposal in the magazine's appeal to "preserve these sentinels of the French soul".

"The French Catholic churches are part of the historical heritage of the French population for ten centuries," Giscard d'Estaing wrote, while Balladur stressed the need to save "the traditions that are largely the image and culture our nation."

The appeal is the latest example of how Sarkozy, who hopes to lead his conservative Les Républicains party to the 2017 presidential race, has toughened his stance on Islam in France.

In March he said he wanted French Muslims to change some of their practices, calling for the ban on the Islamic headscarf to be extended from schools to universities and for halal meals in schools to be scrapped.

In April, Boubakeur called for double the number of mosques in the country in the next two years and said the existing 2,200 mosques were not enough for the 5 million Muslims living in France.