French Muslim leader calls for doubling of mosques says news 
Le Bourget, France: One of France’s top Muslim leaders has called for the number of mosques to double over the next two years to remedy a shortage of places of worship for the country’s millions of faithful.
Speaking at a weekend gathering of French Islamic organizations, where participants asked for respect in the face of a rise in anti-Muslim attacks, Dalil Boubakeur said the 2,200 mosques in the country did not adequately represent Europe’s largest Muslim community.
“We need double (that number) within two years,” the head of the French Muslim Council and rector of the Paris mosque said in the town of Le Bourget near the capital.
“There are a lot of prayer rooms, of unfinished mosques, and there are a lot of mosques that are not being built,” he added Saturday at the Muslim gathering, billed as the largest in the Western world.
This annual convention of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), which groups together more than 250 Muslim associations, comes just months after jihadist gunmen killed 17 people in and near Paris. Since then, there has been a marked rise in Islamophobia in France, with 167 acts against mosques or threats recorded in January alone compared to just 14 in the same month last year.
France has long had a difficult relationship with its Muslim minority — currently estimated at between four and five million — that dates back to bloody struggles in its former North African colonies and the legacy of immigrants trapped in some of the country’s poorest districts.
Long decades of insurgency against French rule in Algeria in the mid-twentieth century, followed by a spate of Algerian extremist attacks in France in the 1990s created difficulties for communal relations — which reawakened with the rise of global jihadism after 9/11. Apart from physical acts, anti-Muslim sentiment in the country varies from mayors refusing to have mosques built to resistance to halal meals being served in prisons or schools.
Participants at the gathering —
which while organized by the UOIF, a group close to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, ranged from liberal to ultra-conservative — denounced violence committed in the name of Islam.
“We are loyal to our country, France. We love God, we love our prophet, but we also love the French Republic,” said Amar Lasfar, UOIF head.
Boubakeur agreed, adding nevertheless that Muslims must also be respected in France.
“Islam is no longer an Islam stemming from immigration, it is a national Islam that has the right to the recognition and consideration of the French population, just like other communities in France,” Boubakeur said.
Hmm.. Organized by the UOIF group
So who are these UOIF group ? Union of Islamic Organisations of France
........The UOIF was founded in 1983 in Meurthe-et-Moselle by two foreign students, Abdallah Ben Mansour (Tunisia) and Mahmoud Zouheir (Iraq) as a federation of about 15 organisations; as of 2005, it covers around 200 organisations.[1] As objectives, the UOIF cites "to respond to religious, cultural, educational, social and humanitarian needs of the Muslims of France. Its website states that it "takes part in the individual and collective understanding of the need for a responsible and positive integration". [1]. The UOIF owns around 30 mosques and directs around 200 others.
It is the French chapter of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, which is partly funded by money from the Gulf States, and whose aim is to promote an Islam adapted to the European context. The UOIE is directed from the United Kingdom by Ahmed al-Rawi, assisted by the European Council of Research and Fatwa, which studies and edicts "collective fatwas to answer questions for Muslims of Europe and solve their problems, in accordance to the rules and aims of the sharia".
On November 7, 2005, the UOIF issued a rather ineffective fatwa condemning the ongoing civil unrests, saying that "it is strictly forbidden for any Muslim [...] to take part in any action that strikes blindly at private or public property or that could threaten the lives of others"....
that is what wiki says.. So that is the news and is published from Sand land in arabnews.com
So what is the reader's opinion on the news??
Topic: French Muslim leader calls for doubling of mosques says news