Grand Mosque of Paris

The Grand Mosque of Paris (Grande Mosquée de Paris), also known as the Great Mosque of Paris or simply the Paris Mosque, is located in the 5th arrondissement and is one of the largest mosques in France. There are prayer rooms, an outdoor garden, a small library, a gift shop, along with a cafe and restaurant. In all, the mosque plays an important role in promoting the visibility of Islam and Muslims in France. It is the oldest mosque in Metropolitan France. The history of the Paris mosque is inextricably linked to France's colonization of large parts of the Muslim world over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An early, if not the first, project for a mosque in Paris is recorded as desired to be "in the Baujon district in 1842, followed by a revival of similar intentions at the Moroccan embassy in 1878 and 1885." In 1846, the Société orientale (Eastern Society) proposed the construction "in Paris, then at Marseilles, of a cemetery, mosque, and a Muslim school (collège)." According to the historian Michel Renard, it was put forward "for philanthropic reasons, augmented by political reasons (the recent conquest and pacification of Algeria), but also religious since Muslims were judged to be closer to Roman Catholicism than the Jews." The negative reaction of the Ministry of Justice and Religions, which debated the matter with the National Assembly, shelved the project for ten years. A French Prefectorial decree of 29 November 1856 permitted the Ottoman Embassy in Paris to construct a special enclosure that was reserved for the burial of Muslims in the 85th division of the Parisian Cemetery of the East, called Père Lachaise. The enclosure measured about 800 square meters, and in it the Ottomans built a structure labeled as a 'Mosque,' in order to give shelter to funerary services and the prayers for the deceased. It was thus the first mosque constructed on Parisian territory.