“Donate to build a mosque, brothers and sisters,” said one of the volunteers.

By Hadi Yahmid, IOL Correspondent

PARIS, March 28, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – A major Muslim conference in France that brought together some 150,000 Muslims from across Europe became a fundraising scene to build mosques in the country to cater for the spiritual needs of its sizable Muslim minority.

A miscellany of ads were emblazoned across the hall of the 22nd conference of the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF), Paris-le-Bourget, encouraging people to contribute to building mosques to replace many vaults used as prayer rooms.

“Donate to build a mosque, brothers and sisters,” Kareem, a 22-year-old volunteer, urged the conference audience carrying a small box to receive the charity.

Other Muslim associations in France seized the conference to drum up financial support for building mosques, like the Cultural League for the Muslims of Toulouse.

A survey by IslamOnline.net last October showed that the majority of France’s six million Muslims opt to allocate their Zakah (obligatory alms) to build grand mosques on a par with Christian churches and Jewish synagogues.

Trebes Mosque

The most important project, nonetheless, remains the construction of an Islamic center in the southern city of Trebes, expected to be the largest in Europe.

The project’s maquette has taken center stage in the conference hall with hijab-clad girls and women explaining to the audience its importance to the Muslim minority.

The center is designed to comprise a mosque, accommodating 2,600 men and 800 women, a Qur’an school and a social and cultural center.

“We hope that we will pray the Tarawih prayers this Ramadan in the new mosque in Trebes,” El-Bashir Lasoud, an official with the Muslim Association in the city, which supervises the project, told IOL.

“The school and the cultural and social center are expected to take quite a while because we lack the necessary funds.”

The Trebes project has come under a vile media campaign last year, with Channel 2 describing the project as a bid to conquer Europe and entrench “Islamic fundamentalism”.

“But media failed to break our staunch will or halt the construction of the grand mosque thanks to transparency,” Lasoud said.

On March, 22, France's major Islamic groups and Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin gave the go-ahead for establishing the “Foundation for Islamic Works,” with the aim of financing the construction of mosques and development of other Islamic activities in France.

A French book published last year highlighted the history of mosques in France, particularly in the northern Alsace area.

Titled Histoires de Mosquees, the book takes the readers back to the early stage of construction of mosques in France in 1960s with quotes from some Muslim figures in the country.