Paris Shuts Airport Muslim Prayer Rooms [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Paris Shuts Airport Muslim Prayer Rooms
By ELAINE GANLEY , 08.02.2006, 06:06 PM

Police have shut down makeshift Muslim prayer rooms at Paris' two main airports after they came under scrutiny following a far-right politician's allegations that Islamists were compromising security.

Officials insist there was no threat. But the prayer sites set up by Muslim workers in cloak rooms, depots and other areas at Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports were quietly shuttered. There are three official prayer rooms still open at each airport, just as there are chapels for Christians and synagogues for Jews.

A book published in May by Philippe de Villiers, a presidential hopeful who opposes Muslim immigration, said clandestine prayer rooms honeycombed the corridors beneath airport runways and that Muslims were poised to put the premises under Islamic Sharia law.

Villiers claimed to base his book, "The Mosques of Roissy," on intelligence reports. While many saw the book as a publicity grab, it caused a stir and briefly climbed the best seller list.
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