MACRON URGED TO LEVY ‘HALAL TAX’ TO FUND COUNTER-EXTREMISM MEASURES
▶ Think tank proposes that the levy on food, pilgrimages and donations be collected by Muslims themselves
France will adopt a special “halal tax” if President Emmanuel Macron accepts a major new report aimed at fighting extremism and creating an independent body for Europe’s largest Muslim population.
Mr Macron is urged in the study by the Montaigne Institut, the Paris think tank, to support a small levy on halal products, pilgrimages and donations.
The report’s author, Hakim El Karoui, a French academic and the nephew of a former Tunisian prime minister, says the proposed tax would be collected by Muslims, not the state.
Titled The Islamist Factory, the report has gone to the Elysee Palace as Mr Macron makes deliberations before his announcement on the organisation of Islam in France.
It has been reported that Mr Macron is determined to curb foreign involvement in French Islam. He is said to favour a body to replace organisations including the much-criticised French Muslim Council, established in 2003 by a former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, when he was interior minister.
Critics say the council fails to assert itself as an authoritative, fully representative voice.
Mr Macron wants a complete overhaul that tackles thorny issues of overseas funding and the training of imams. He has excluded the council from a broad consultation process.
As well as arguing for the creation of a Muslim Association for Islam in France (Amif), Mr El Karoui calls for much wider teaching of Arabic in schools.
Both ideas – and the report itself – provoked a mixed reaction among Muslim and political leaders but will be considered by Mr Macron before he unveils his initiative some time in the autumn.
Mr El Karoui, a former banker, says the levy would be managed by the new body, following the example of the “kosher tax” administered by French Jewish authorities.
In the conclusion to his report, he says: “French Islam, contrary to what is said, is not poor. It merely needs those who are impoverishing it to move away from the management of financial flows linked to it and for a healthy management to regulate the market of Islamic consumption.”
This, he says, would allow the establishment of a central fund to serve the public interest: financing theological work, enabling the training of religious figures, remunerating imams and combating anti-Muslim xenophobia
The report Mr Macron is considering contains a proposal for a levy akin to that administered by France’s Jews
and “the anti-Semitism shown by some Muslims”.
In interviews on how the scheme could work, he says Amif would be independent of the countries of members’ origin and of mosques. It would collect a small sum on each act of Islam-related consumption, reinvesting proceeds in theological work “because it is the mother of all the battles”.
Mr El Karoui said that young Muslims in particular increasingly learn about their faith through social networks, not family or even mosques.
He said France must learn from Britain’s anti-radicalisation Prevent programme to develop an alternative Muslim narrative to counter the Salafist discourse he considers “prevalent on social networks today”.
Otherwise, he fears a “minority of Muslims in France”, regarding French society as illicit, will push for an alternative with its own rules, norms and standards.
French imams, he argues, have been too weak to compete with “the strength of Salafist influencers”.
He told The National: “We have to make Muslims eager to speak up by explaining that it is their responsibility not to leave their religion to [radicals] who impose their view and rules.
“It is in their interest [to speak up] because the image of Islam in Europe is very negative due to the terrorist attacks, because of the behaviour of certain [radicals] and especially their behaviour towards women.”
But his analysis was condemned on Thursday by Kamel Kabtane, rector of the Grand Mosque in the eastern city of Lyon, as calculated to “divide the French”.
“Taking as its pretext the fight against [extremism], this report with an uncertain outline and risky objectives shows how much its promoters ... try to discredit the Muslim community and its representatives,” he said.
He said the report was at odds with attempts by Muslim institutions, civil society and state officials to work together ahead of Mr Macron’s announcement to help Islam find its proper place in France.
“For us the only fight that is worthy of fighting is against [extremism]; it is the one that unites all the French in building a France that is just and fraternal,” he said.