Is there a form of religious separatism in French cemeteries? At least this is what a former deputy from Savoie, who has gone to court over Muslim burial grounds, claims, as reported by Le Figaro on Friday June 17. Marcel Girardin, a former municipal councillor (SE) from Voglans, told the newspaper that he criticises a “segregating and discriminatory religious point of view” which, in his opinion, “violates the essential principles of secular neutrality and equality before the law espoused by the French Republic”.
On Thursday June 16, at the request of the Paris Administrative Court, the Council of State reviewed a request to delete two passages of a circular of February 19, 2008, relating to the design of cemeteries and the confessional merging of graves, the newspaper reports. It is expected to make a decision in “two to three weeks”.
On the occasion of an article about the burial of a Syrian refugee in 2018 in the Muslim burial ground of the Chambery cemetery, I did some research,” Marcel Girardin reports in detail in the columns of the newspaper. I came across a circular from 2008 in which the Minister of the Interior [then Michèle Alliot-Marie, editor’s note] asked prefects to encourage mayors to promote the creation of confessional burial plots, in particular on the grounds that there were supposedly ‘appropriate agreements’.” The aim of this approach, the former Savoy MP continued: “To promote the integration of families with an immigrant background.”
In this circular, according to Marcel Girardin, Michèle Alliot-Marie asked prefects to verify with mayors who have authorised the burial of a citizen in a confessional burial ground “that no religious sign or emblem interferes with this confessional space and offends certain families”. This violates the Code général des collectivités territoriales (CGCT), which states that “any private individual may, without authorisation, have a gravestone or other sign indicating the religious background of the burial place placed on the grave of a relative or friend”.
The law of November 14, 1881 on freedom of burial establishes the principle of non-discrimination in cemeteries and removes the requirement that a part of the site or a specific place be available for each religion, reports Le Figaro. It specifies that cemeteries must be ” ‘ inter-confessional’, secular and neutral spaces, with the exception of the Alsace-Moselle department. Specifically, all identifying signs of the different religions are prohibited in communal areas, while religious symbols may only appear at the level of the graves. Subsequently, the issue of “confessional burial grounds” was further explained in three circulars from the Ministry of the Interior. The last one dates from 2008.