France funding mosques?

A French politician wants to change the law to allow government-funding of mosques:

One could get the impression, in the immigrant suburbs that ring Paris, that France's famous secularism is on the wane. One very popular politician seems to think so. Nicolas Sarkozy, chief of President Jacques Chirac's UMP party, has made a bid to bring religion and state a little closer together.

Last fall Sarkozy generated huge media attention with the publication of his book La Republique, les religions, l'esperance (The Republic, Religions, Hope), in which he talked about his own Catholic faith and called for a greater role for religion in public life.

He has also argued for amending France's law separating church and state, which turns 100 this year. The 1905 law bars any state funding of religious groups and is the cornerstone of French secularism. Amending it would allow for the financing of mosques. Unlike churches and synagogues, mosques weren't around to be funded before 1905, and so Islam has wound up relatively shortchanged in terms of real estate. The idea behind helping mosques is that doing so would bring Muslims more into the mainstream, thus countering extremism.

Fortunately, most French people disagree with him:

But France is not getting religion, at least not yet. So far, Sarkozy's foray into American-style public religiosity has gone over like a lead balloon. Whatever the French may do on their weekends, there has been no show of support for relaxing the state's strict secularism. The new ban on religious symbols in public schools is, on the whole, popular. And President Chirac has reiterated his support for the 1905 law numerous times.