Turkish Ahmet Ogras To Lead The French Council Of Muslim Faith

Algerian community lost again, the presidency of the French Council of Muslim Faith, as the French of Turkish origin, Ahmet Ogras, will lead this body from the beginning of next July, the body that is considered the mediator between the French state and the Muslims who are living there.

Turkish community that is living in France does not have a similar number to the Algerian community, which is considered the first in France among the Muslim communities, and not even the Moroccan community, which ranks second. However, Turkey’s Ogras won the victory, which was a surprise for the followers and a victory of Turkish Islam over its Maghreb counterparts, at a time the Arab world is witnessing a state of fragmentation that is embodied by the deepening of Gulf crisis between Qatar and its neighbors.

For the first time, the chairmanship of this body came out of the hands of the Maghreb community since its creation in 2003, as it has been headed by the Dean of the Grand Mosque of Paris, the Algerian Dalil Boubakeur, who continued until 2008, then the French Moroccan Mohamed Mousaoui was elected amid great controversy because of the sensitivity between Algeria and Morocco, before the return of Dalila Boubakeur to the presidency in 2013, and since 2015 to this date it was headed by the French of Moroccan origin, Anouar Kebibieche, the former head.

The French government began preparing for the establishment of the council in 1997, when Jean-Pierre Chevénement was appointed Interior Ministry. The project then continued with Daniel Vaillant, until the establishment of the Council in 2003, when the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, was Interior Minister, as he was the one who embodied the project on the ground according to calculations that were aimed at the extension of the influence of the French state on Islam in this country, and the exploitation of the Muslim community in the electoral accounts, which led him to the Elysee Palace in 2007.

Since its inception, the successive French governments have relied on the French Council for the Islamic Religion to build bridges with the Muslim community, as it has dominated through it to build mosques, monitor places of worship and the market of Halal trade, as it was an outlet for the rehabilitation of imams that are directed to work in French mosques, and then reaching the old goal, which is framing Muslims.

The newcomer at the head of the Council of the French Religion founded in 2006 the “European Union of the Turkish Democrats”, as the newspaper “Le Monde” said that “Ogras” is considered close to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, this is why they consider him a political man and not a cleric, which has increased the fears of French officials that this position could be exploited in the face of France’s foreign policy toward Turkey, which already lived in the differences, especially under the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, because of the latter’s parallel to the Armenian proposals, which accused the Ottoman Turkey of committing Massacres against Armenians during the 1st World War .