French PM Valls in favour of temporary ban on foreign funding for mosques

France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that he was "open" to a temporary ban on foreign financing for mosques following a spate of attacks in France claimed by jihadists.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said there was a need to forge a new relationship with Islam in France. FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP

In an interview with the daily Le Monde, Valls also said France needed to forge "a new relationship" with Islam.

"We need to reset and invent a new relationship with Islam in France," Valls said. He also called for imams to be "trained in France and not elsewhere."

He also admitted that it was a "failure" that one of the jihadists who attacked a church and killed a priest earlier this week had been released with an electronic tag pending trial.

The fact that one of the church attackers, 19-year-old Adel Kermiche, was awaiting trial on terror charges and had been fitted with an electronic tag meant judges needed to take a "different, case-by-case, approach," Valls said.

However, he stressed that the judges in this individual case should not be held responsible for this "act of terrorism."

He said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, whose portfolio also includes religious affairs, was working on building a "new model" for France's relations with Islam.

And Salafism – the deeply fundamentalist branch of Islam espoused by many jihadists –"has no place in France," Valls said.

France has just over 2,000 mosques, for one of Europe's largest Muslim populations which numbers around five million.

Some large mosques have been financed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf or Northern African countries, according to local media reports.

Syrian refugee held over church attack

Meanwhile, a source close to the investigation into the attack on church near Rouen said a Syrian asylum seeker had been taken in for questioning after being arrested at a refugee centre in Alliers, central France.

A photocopy of a Syrian passport was found in the home of one of the two attackers that may be that of the asylum seeker, the source said.

- with AFP