(Observer-UK) Alex Duval Smith - Last week, Le Monde leaked a French intelligence service report saying that more than 300 housing estates had become third-world ghettos in which nearly two million people lived on the fringes of Islamic extremism. In the Clos Saint-Lazare area, the As Salam mosque is said to be Salafist - a fundamentalist sect supported by the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia and thus a potential recruiting ground for terrorists. The intelligence services claim As Salam runs Saturday morning phone-ins with religious "guides" in Mecca. According to the report, polygamy was common, anti-Semitism was on the rise, and Europeans were moving out.
2004-07-13 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive