Source: The Washington Post

PARIS — The mournful sermon in the Mosque Tawhid at Friday prayers was about the attacks, because it is hard now to speak of anything else and dangerous to say nothing.

“Islam is completely against this abomination. To kill someone is to kill all of humanity,” the preacher, a member of the mosque named Abdallah, told dozens of men and women seated on the carpeted floor. “We all have an obligation to condemn these barbaric attacks. People need to hear that.

“If we don’t speak, certain people will ask questions.”

This mosque in the Paris suburb of Blanc-Mesnil was publicly accused last week by a politician in the neighboring town of radicalizing Samy Amimour, a 28-year-old who grew up nearby and was among the suspected gunmen at the Bataclan concert hall where at least 89 people died Nov. 13.

The Muslims who pray here were shocked by the accusation and its bluntness. Theirs was “a mosque known for being radical,” the neighboring deputy mayor, Jean-Christophe Lagarde, told the news media, “for being a place where they seek to radicalize the young.”

[Brussels on alert for second day as Europe faces continued terror threat]

This mosque, long part of the surrounding community, where members distributed brochures deploring violence after the Charlie Hebdo attack, has been caught in the broad net of rumors, raids and deep suspicion surrounding France’s Muslims since the latest attack. Mosques across the country have been searched, as have individual homes in hundreds of “counterterrorism” searches not particularly linked to the Paris plot but conducted under the expanded police powers granted by the country’s current state of emergency.

The sweeping reaction comes in a country with a long-standing tension between the guarantee of religious liberty and a deeply felt political commitment to secularism — a tension that has been particularly acute for Muslims. In France, minarets are controversial, and girls are banned from wearing headscarves in public schools.

“The government reacted quickly and badly,” said Samy Debah, president of the Collective Against Islamophobia in France.

The government has been striving to reassure the French people by showing, very visibly, that it won’t tolerate even suspected signs of extremism. Polling data published over the weekend shows that 91 percent approve extending the state of emergency for an additional three months.

[9 young men and their paths to terror in Paris]

Assimilation is prized in France over the kind of “melting pot” ideal that exists in the United States. In France, the other is welcomed — if the other blends in.