{"id":37148,"date":"2013-02-05T18:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-02-05T18:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/more_in_france_are_turning_to_islam_challenging_a_nations_idea_of_itself\/"},"modified":"2013-02-05T18:00:13","modified_gmt":"2013-02-05T18:00:13","slug":"more_in_france_are_turning_to_islam_challenging_a_nations_idea_of_itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=37148","title":{"rendered":"More in France Are Turning to Islam, Challenging a Nation\u2019s Idea of Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Marseille, on the southern coast, \u201cconversions have increased at an incredible pace in the last three years,\u201d\u009d said Abderrahmane Ghoul, the imam of the major mosque of Marseille and the president of the local branch of the French Council of the Muslim Faith. Mr. Ghoul signed about 130 conversion certificates in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Hassen Chalghoumi, the moderate imam of Drancy, another suburb near Paris, says he thinks conversions have also been propelled by France\u2019s official secularism, which he says breeds spiritual emptiness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSecularism has become antireligious,\u201d\u009d Mr. Chalghoumi said. \u201cTherefore, it has created an opposite phenomenon. It has allowed people to discover Islam.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/02\/04\/world\/europe\/rise-of-islamic-converts-challenges-france.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Marseille, on the southern coast, \u201cconversions have increased at an incredible pace in the last three years,\u201d\u009d said Abderrahmane Ghoul, the imam of the major mosque of Marseille and the president of the local branch of the French Council<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=37148\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40,50,42,200,468,133,426,155,151,108,424],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-economics-politics","category-international-news-commentary","category-religion-news-commentary","category-europe","category-france","category-history","category-islam","category-other-faiths","category-politics-in-general","category-religion-culture","category-secularism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}