The French government has been accused of following Islamic law, specifically one which designates guardianship of children, to determine housing benefits for Muslims.
The French housing benefit, known as CAF, is calculated on a number of factors, including the income of a household and how many children live in a household.
On the official website of the CAF, the government mentions a form of Islamic jurisprudence known as “Kafala” as being valid alongside other documents to prove guardianship of children, leading some to question if the government is following Islamic law.
Anti-Islamisation Front National MP Gilbert Collard questioned the French state giving legal legitimacy to what he called a “Quranic judgement”.
Describing Kafala as “totally foreign to any French legal norm” and arguing that such judgements are “directly derived from the Quranic law”, Collard asked the French Justice Ministry how Quranic law held any force in France.
Fellow Front National member and MEP Bernard Monot also questioned whether or not the policy was a sign of Islamisation.
French left-wing newspaper Libération put out an article to “fact-check” the claims of the Front National politicians and found that the French government does accept Kafala documents from countries like Algeria and Morocco in North Africa because such judgements have legal standing in those countries.
Islamisation has been a pressing issue for many in France for years, leading to the ban on the full face Islamic veils known as the burqa and niqab in 2010.
More recently, the government has attempted to ban other items of Islamic clothing like the sharia-compliant swimwear known as the “burkini”.
Front National politicians are also not the only ones pushing back against Islamisation in France. Last year, a group of conservative Republican politicians in the Paris suburb of Clichy joined together to protest a group of Muslims who had been praying in the street every Friday for months.