Rows cast doubt over French Muslim Council vote

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor

PARIS (Reuters) - The Paris Grand Mosque announced on Saturday it would boycott elections to France's Muslim Council, throwing into doubt the future of the body President Nicolas Sarkozy created to represent the country's second-largest faith.

Dalil Boubakeur, the Grand Mosque rector who has headed the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) since 2003, said the June 8 poll would be unfair since delegates allowed to vote would be chosen according to the prayer space in their mosques.

"This is not the way to organise Islam in France," said Boubakeur, who said the voting system ensured the Grand Mosque's national network of about 100 mosques would end up far behind other networks that have been building many new mosques.

A statement by the Mosque's national network announcing the boycott called the system an "absurd electoral mechanism."

Behind the poll dispute was a struggle for influence in the 5-million-strong community, Europe's largest Muslim minority, between the Algerian-backed Grand Mosque network and a Moroccan-backed movement keen to gain control of the CFCM.

As interior minister before becoming president last year, Sarkozy helped launch the CFCM in 2003 as a national body to represent Islam, now France's largest faith after Catholicism.

Before polls in 2003 and 2005, he imposed Boubakeur as head of the CFCM regardless of the result. The Grand Mosque network accounts for 15 percent of prayer space in France but claims it is the country's oldest and best established Islamic group.

SARKOZY SEEN STAYING NEUTRAL