THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Marine Le Pen has promised to defend France from creeping "Islamisation" days before she is expected to take over from her father as head of the National Front party.
The 42-year-old is seen as a potentially dangerous threat to President Nicolas Sarkozy if chosen to succeed Jean-Marie Le Pen in a mid-January party congress almost 40 years after he founded the party.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Miss Le Pen, said: "The progressive Islamisation of our country and the increase in political-religious demands are calling into question the survival of our civilisation."
"We are fighting against Islamism, not Islam", she said.
"Islamism is the will to impose Shariah for all as civil, political and religious law. We Western societies are fighting against Islamism all around the world. We have sent our kids to Afghanistan to be killed to fight against Islamism, and we don't have the right in France through words and political action to fight it? That seems totally absurd to me," she said.
Miss Le Pen said examples of creeping Islamisation included pork being taken off the menu in certain French schools, the fact that 22 Quick fast food restaurants were offering exclusively Halal burgers. She also claimed that Muslim communities were receiving hidden French government funds to build "increasingly ostentatious mosque-cathedrals" or ones funded by Saudi Arabia.
"In reality, it's asking French people to increasingly submit themselves to the Muslim religion. That goes totally against the secular principles of the French republic," she claimed, adding that the issue would be a "key theme" of the 2012 presidential elections. >>> Henry Samuel in Paris | Boxing Day, 2010
