A Pro-Church Law Helps a Mosque

STRASBOURG, France. The Alsace-Moselle region is the great French exception. Having been variously French and German in the last few centuries — annexed, presumably for the last time, by Hitler’s Germany before returning to France after World War II — Alsace-Moselle still has a German feel, with rounded edges.

While France is a model for the centralized state, Alsace-Moselle is different, especially on the question of politics and religion. Because the region was German in 1905, when France passed major legislation separating church and state — a policy known as laïcité, usually translated as secularism — the local government continues to involve itself in the established religions, providing a wide variety of subsidies and even religious education in the public schools.

Extraordinarily for secular France, here the state not only helps to finance the construction of places of worship but also approves the appointments of clergy members and even pays their salaries.

But not for Islam. Muslims are now the second largest religious group in this region of 2.9 million people, and there (...)