Muslims urged to promote ‘enlightened Islam’

France has urged its Muslim leaders to promote an “enlightened Islam” to counter the views of Islamic State (IS), the radical Islamist movement that has claimed responsibility for the 13 November Paris massacre that killed 130 people.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve (pictured) told a meeting of 400 Muslim leaders, imams and activists that only other Muslims could win the ideological war within Islam that is creating jihadists ready to kill and terrorise others. He spoke at a meeting where Muslim leaders passed a resolution clearly condemning the Paris attacks, declaring allegiance to France and pledging new efforts to better integrate disaffected Muslim youth.

Mr Cazeneuve said he envisaged a “Gallican Islam, that keeps abreast of modern society’s concerns and resolves issues that [Islam] never had to resolve in its societies of origin”.

In France’s religious history, “Gallican” describes a pre-revolutionary Catholic Church that reserved for the king the right to appoint bishops, instead of the Vatican. It is curious to use it to describe Islam, whose lack of a central authority such as the Pope is part of the reason for its present crisis of authority.

Academic experts also argued that violent jihadists were more youth rebels than religious fanatics. “This is not a radicalisation of Islam, but an Islamisation of radicalism,” said leading Islam expert Olivier Roy.