One of France's largest Muslim organizations yesterday rejected charges of anti-Semitism brought by a U.S.-based Jewish group seeking legal action to replace its leadership with more moderate Muslims.
Fouad Alaoui, secretary general of the powerful Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF), denied his group was anti-Jewish and accused the Simon Wiesenthal Center of wanting to block the integration of Muslims into French society.
The Paris office of the Los Angeles-based Wiesenthal Center, which combats anti-Semitism worldwide, has urged France to investigate links between the UOIF and pro-Palestinian groups it says collect money for Hamas.
"I defy anyone to prove the UOIF has anti-Semitic positions," said Alaoui, whose group - which is popular with disaffected Muslim youths in France - is said to be close to the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
He said he would welcome a probe because it would show "that there are people here in France who don't want Islam to be established legally or Muslims to be seen as full citizens."
The Wiesenthal Center's Paris office last week urged the government "to launch an inquiry leading to the dismantling and possible condemnation of this organization's current leadership and its replacement by more moderate voices of French Islam."
Its director Shimon Samuels said the UOIF was "a radical political organization" linked to the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual guide Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, who has issued fatwas (religious decrees) supporting suicide bombers.
It also linked the UOIF to a pro-Hamas group banned in the United States.
Samuels also provided texts from a forum on the UOIF Web site which he said documented the anti-Semitic views it condoned.
The Wiesenthal Center's initiative was the latest accusation against Islamic preachers or groups popular with youths in France's 5-million-strong Muslim minority.
Two books have come out in recent weeks attacking Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss Muslim intellectual popular in France who was banned in September from entering the United States to take up a teaching post there at a Catholic university, Notre Dame.
Another popular preacher, Hassan Iquioussen, has been indirectly criticized by Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin for anti-Semitic comments in his sermons that were exposed by the daily newspaper Le Figaro.
Iquioussen has apologized for any comments which he said he might have made unintentionally. Le Figaro found the comments on a tape of his sermons being sold in an Islamic bookshop.
Alaoui told France 2 television Iquioussen did not speak for his organization, which is the main rival to the moderate Grande Mosque of Paris group whose rector, Dalil Boubakeur, heads the official French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM).
Villepin did not name the UOIF or Iquioussen in parliament last week when, in an apparent reference to the dispute, he said Paris wanted to eliminate radical Islam in France.