fascinating article

[straffo]

Originally posted by lazs2
straffo.. can you link to where you got the 6% number?

lazs

It's the number of muslim the "Conseil français du culte musulman" say to represent : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Council_of_the_Muslim_Faith

Btw the estimation vary from 2 to 12 million ,so you can choose whatever you want


http://www.lexpress.fr/info/societe/dossier/mosquees/dossier.asp?ida=415635

[Edbert]

Originally posted by straffo
Btw the estimation vary from 2 to 12 million ,so you can choose whatever you want

Agreed, making much of this sophmoric. So if there's 60 million people there and the Muslim population "could be" 6 million (fits pretty squarely between 2 and 12 non?) the original figure of 10% is not exacly a falsehood now is it?

[straffo]

6 million is roughly the number of people coming from muslim countries (like Algeria Morocco...) and for this there is data (I should add it's forbiden in France to ask people about their religion).

And I don't think all those 6 million are practicing their faith but more likely 75% (this is the percentage of people doing the ramadan) so it's mor 4 million than 6.
If you prefer we can use another number : 60% of the french mulim say they don't drink alcohol it give 3.6 million.

[kamilyun]

Interesting reading, makes you think about the issues very pragmatically even if some of the minor details can be debated.

Western (European) culture and the Muslim world have had an interesting history of interaction.  I certainly agree with the timeline laid out in terms of the ebb and flow of fanaticism/militarism.  The Muslim/Arab world has seen great periods of scientific and mathematical advancement.  Europeans learned trigonometry from them (Sine and Cosine are a corruption of the Arabic words, I believe) among other things.

I think a lot of the current strife in the Middle East can be traced to the arbitrary drawing of borders post-World Wars.  Not that their shooting of each other and us is our fault, but it certainly gave a "rich" environment for sectarian and ethnic strife.