French Muslim leaders have appealed to President François Hollande come out as strongly against Islamophobia as he has against anti-Semitism. They estimate that the number of anti-Muslim acts in France rose 34 per cent last year.

Leaders of the Muslim umbrella body, the CFCM, which was set up by former president Nicolas Sarkozy when he was interior minister, met Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on

Thursday to call for action against what they claim is a rise in Islamophobia. 

They called on Hollande to condemn it in a "solemn declaration", similar to his call for the fight against anti-Semitism to become a "national cause".

Islamophobic incidents rose 34 per cent in 2011 and 14 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, according to Abdellah Zekri of the CFCM's Observatory of Islamophobia.

Zekri blamed a number of factors for the rise, among them:

RFI, 9 November 2012

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France's socialist presidential candidate says that, if elected, he won't seek to overturn a law banning face-covering Muslim veils enacted by President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives.

François Hollande, who leads Sarkozy in all polls, and most other Socialists abstained from the 2010 vote in the National Assembly to ban mesh-screen burqas and niqabs – which have slits for the eyes.

On RTL radio Friday, Hollande said he would keep the ban, but "have it applied in the best way." He did not elaborate.

Controversy surrounded the law that took effect last year. Muslim leaders say it unfairly stigmatizes Muslims. Supporters insist it helps defend France's secular state. Only a tiny number of women wear the veils.

The presidential election runoff is May 6.

Associated Press, 27 April 2012

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Sarkozy told a French TV station this week that Tariq Ramadan, a controversial Muslim intellectual and Swiss national, supported Hollande. "This is a man who solicits votes for Hollande," Sarkozy told the TF1 TV station, before adding, "And I have never heard Hollande say it bothers him".

Not so, replied Hollande. "That is completely false," said the Socialist frontrunner in an interview with the France Info radio station. "Tariq Ramadan, who does not even vote in France, has never mentioned my name."

In a phone interview with FRANCE 24 Thursday, Ramadan denounced Sarkozy's latest allegation, calling it "a mean and unacceptable lie".

"The presidential candidate has been caught flagrantly lying," he said. "I only said that if I was a French citizen ... I would take a look at Sarkozy's track record over the past five years, and I would be very dissatisfied about it. The outgoing president is trying to poach supporters from the National Front. He's beginning to smell defeat and so he's pushing it even further."

Ramadan's comment came as Sarkozy, who has been lagging in the polls, is desperately trying to woo the 18 percent of the French electorate who voted for the far-right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen in the April 22 first round of the presidential poll.

In another interview earlier Thursday, the embattled French president insisted Ramadan had called on French Muslims to vote for Hollande "or a party that serves Islam" at a March 11 public meeting in the southern French city of Lyon.

But in his interview with FRANCE 24, Ramadan categorically denied the allegation. "I remember that meeting well. I never made any such comment, because I never address the community vote," he said. "When I attack Nicolas Sarkozy, I'm taking on the government, the establishment. As for the Socialist Party, I also regret that it has abandoned its ideals. I hold both the mainstream French political parties responsible for the rise of the National Front."

Ramadan is dismissive about the incumbent candidate. "I have no lessons to learn from Nicolas Sarkozy, who sang the praises of a 'moderate and progressive' Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia, when he visited the country in 2008," he said. But he insists his criticism does not constitute support for Hollande, a claim Sarkozy finds difficult to swallow.

France 24, 27 April 2012

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