President Nicolas Sarkozy: Presidential Race

France Dept: PARIS - They are France's millions-strong minority with a voice that usually falls silent at election time. But this year, there is a special new effort to mobilize French Muslims to speak up at the ballot box in Sunday's presidential race amid a surge of Islam-bashing among the French right, according to Winnipeg Free Press. Socialist Francois Hollande the poll favourite is more likely to benefit from the get-out-the-vote push, because conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy has spoken out against Muslim practices in his campaign and experts say that Muslims in poor neighbourhoods and Muslim youth tend to vote for the left. But the Muslim vote is diverse, and there's no guarantee that the push will bring out voters, since Muslims have tended in the past to avoid politics and fILE - In this April, 28, 2011 file photo, Kamel Kabtane, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Lyon, poses in the mosque in Lyon, central France. They are France's millions-strong minority with a voice that usually falls silent at election time. But this year, there is a special new effort to mobilize French Muslims to speak up at the ballot box in Sunday's presidential race. AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani, File Imams and Islamic associations are calling on Muslims to do their duty as citizens and go to the polls. And while they're not officially endorsing anyone, the call itself is a bold move in a country where statistics on religious affiliation are formally banned and where secularism is enshrined in the constitution. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.