As they scour the country for contributions, France's mosque-builders recite a slogan no believing Muslim should be able to resist.
"Whoever builds a mosque for Allah, Allah will build him a house in Paradise," goes the saying of the Prophet Mohammad that they recite in Arabic and French and display prominently on posters wherever they go to raise funds.
The slogan gets some results. At a recent Muslim convention in this northern suburb of Paris, collection boxes and plastic bags clinked with coins of one or two euros. Every now and then, a passer-by dropped in a 10 or 20 euro note.
But this small change is nowhere near enough to finance all the projects France's Muslims have. After praying for decades in basements and garages, they now want proper mosques so they can live their faith in public like any other religion.
"We've gone to mosques all over the country looking for money and collected about 10,000 euros this way," said Mohammed Belsouci as he stood beside a scale model of the planned Grand Mosque of Clermont-Ferrand in central France.
"The whole project will cost about three million euros."
Nordine Benseghir from Valenciennes, near the Belgian border, hawked T-shirts for 10 euros apiece to raise funds for his community's mosque project. A sign next to him showed it had raised less than one-fifth of its 1.36 million euros target.
MUSLIMS COME OUT OF SHADOWS
Decades ago, when France's Muslims were mostly just an immigrant workforce, they worshiped in prayer halls hidden in basements or disused garages hardly noticeable outside.
But this minority grew to five million -- eight percent of the population -- and Islam became the second religion in mostly Roman Catholic France. The makeshift mosques overflowed, with faithful kneeling in the streets to perform Friday prayers.
There are now dozens of plans to build or expand mosques.
"We want to have a decent place to pray," said Akim Seba, who was collecting for a mosque in Fontaine in southeastern France. "We don't want to be in the shadows anymore."
Local authorities were mostly reluctant if not hostile when Muslims first sought to build mosques in the 1980s. One mosque was bulldozed, another blocked by referendum and dozens of projects were intentionally held up by red tape.
But politicians can no longer ignore their demands. After the Sept. 11 attacks, many also felt a new urgency in building friendly relations with moderate Muslims.
That doesn't mean it's easy to build now, however.
Mohammed Kouba's group has been struggling for 15 years to get money and building permits for a new mosque to replace its cramped factory prayer hall near Caen in Normandy.
"Whenever we got a permit, the neighbors complained and it was withdrawn. The politicians argued for months just about the height of our minaret. You know, if we built underwater, the fish would complain!" he said in exasperation.
"The city has now given us land and nobody has complained so far. As soon as we get the money, we'll build it," said Kouba, adding his group had half the 564,000 euros it needs.
In some cases, it may not even be that safe. "We have to have a service flat for a security man," said Seba. "Relations with the outside are difficult so we have to protect ourselves.
"People see terrorists on television and think all Muslims are terrorists," he explained wearily.
FUNDS WITH STRINGS ATTACHED
There are over 1,500 Islamic prayer centers in France, mostly set up in basements, garages or abandoned factories decades ago because Muslims could not afford anything better.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Saudi petrodollars bankrolled large showcase mosques in Lyon, Mantes-la-Jolie and Evry. Private Saudi and Gulf benefactors backed many smaller ones.
But Saudi money is much less welcome in France following Sept. 11, after which Western states grew much more concerned about the way Riyadh exported its strict Wahhabi version of Islam along with the funds it gave to build mosques.
"The Saudis have cut back their giving, but some funds are probably still being distributed," said Franck Fregosi, an Islam expert at the University of Strasbourg.
In 2002, France told the visiting head of the World Muslim League -- Saudi Arabia's official body financing Islam abroad -- not to hand out money here if the usual strings were attached.
Prince Abdullah al-Turki promptly reassured the French press that Riyadh had no building projects planned in France.
This February, it contributed one million euros to renovate the Paris Grand Mosque, where the Islam is so moderate that this looked like a signal Riyadh was not only supporting hard-liners.
A QUESTION OF CONTROL
Most fund-raisers seem to share this official suspicion of Saudi funds, even if their mosque projects could use them.
"If a Saudi comes in with a big check for us, that's fine," Kouba said. "But if he then wants to control the mosque, he can take his check and leave."
Outside control usually means taking imams (prayer leaders) from the donor country. Only about 10 percent of all imams in France are French citizens, the rest coming from countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
"Those imams can't respond to problems Muslims face in France," Kouba said, noting his community tells girls not to wear headscarves to state school because they're banned. "An imam from Saudi Arabia would not tell you to obey a French law."
Mohammed Slilem knew all the arguments about outside meddling but admitted he'd take money from just about anywhere to build a boxy annex to the former garage his community in Saint Dizier in eastern France uses for its prayers.
"After the problems started for Muslims, after September 11, Saudi Arabia stopped helping Muslims abroad," he sighed. "We went there on haj (pilgrimage) and presented our plan, but they didn't want to finance it."