France herds Muslim faithful off streets after prayer ban

France,home to Europe’s largest Muslim population,this year banned the face-covering burqa and earlier this week Interior Minister Claude Gueant warned that from September 16 there will be no more prayers in the street.

If anyone happens to be recalcitrant we will put an end to it, Gueant said,suggesting police could be brought in.

Prayers in the street are unacceptable,a direct attack on the principle of secularism, Gueant said last month,citing the government’s defence of the republic’s secular values as reason for the new policies.

In Paris,a former barracks just north of the city limits has been designated the new prayer area for those living in the multi-ethnic Goutte d’Or neighbourhood,around two kilometres away.

The praying faithful at the Goutte d’Or’s two mosques have overflowed into the streets since a nearby mosque where 4,000 people could pray closed years ago,sparking the ire of French right-wing and anti-immigration parties.

The neighbourhood’s mosques are to be closed for at least the coming three Fridays in order to encourage those wanting to pray to go to the renovated barracks,one of the mosques’ preachers,Sheikh Mohammed Hamza said.