How do you tell Muslims in your midst that they are not unloved and unwanted? "That's what I am trying to do in France," political scientist Tariq Ramadan told United Press International on October 29. He is the grandson of Hassan Al Banna, founder of Egypt's fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

Unlike his grandfather, though, Ramadan is a reformist Muslim who combats extremism and rejects the belief of many of his co-religionists that people of other faiths are not their equal.

He tirelessly crisscrosses the French-speaking countries in Europe prodding its Islamic citizens to see themselves as competent citizens of free societies, and at the same time as genuine believers.

Ramadan lives in Geneva, teaches at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and has an office in Paris. He is forever on high-speed trains racing from front to front in a difficult war where the enemy is clichéd thinking.

To the applause and with the support of the French government, he urges Muslims to integrate. "I deliberately do not lecture in mosques, but in public assembly rooms that are open to everybody. Thousands attend," he said.

His message is: "France is not really a bigoted country. Why not participate in this society?"

"The importance of Ramadan's work cannot be over estimated," said Alain Boyer, sub-prefect of the Reims district and one of the French government's foremost specialists on Islam.

"There are between four and five million Muslims in France alone," Ramadan related, "and half of them are French citizens. Although as a group they are very young, they think in terms of the era of de-colonization. To them it's a world of 'them and us'."

Ramadan attributes this to a lack of self-confidence.

Most French Muslims are immigrants from the country's former possessions in North Africa, who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, and their descendants.

They live primarily in the grim housing projects surrounding the cities; high-rise buildings erected in the 1970s and1980s. They are so dilapidated now that the French government recently announced its intention to blow up some of the worst ones.

"Unemployment is very high in these suburbs," Ramadan said, "In some parts of the country it reaches 40 percent."

When you add divided loyalties to this mix of unemployment and poor housing, the resulting brew can seem volatile, Ramadan, Boyer and other scholars said.

On October 7, thanks to the talent of its star player Zindine "Zizou" Zidane, a man of Algerian origin, France's national soccer team won a match against Algeria. But when the French national anthem was played to honor the victors, thousands of spectators whistled angrily.

Like "Zizou," they were North African immigrants or their descendants. But on that day their heart was not with him and France, but with Algeria.

But do these feelings of continuing connection to their parents' homeland make them a breeding ground for supporters of accused terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, as some French media reports have suggested?

Ramadan estimates that perhaps 12 percent entertain such sympathies. "Yet none of them favor terrorism," he said.

Boyer insists that integration is the best protection against extremism. Ramadan agrees: "This is why I teach young Muslims an ethics of citizenship, something I also lecture African-American Muslims during my frequent trips every year to the United States."

The author of a book titled, To Be a European Muslim, Ramadan adds another point: "Being a practicing Muslim also makes you a better citizen."

Boyer and Ramadan differ on how many "beurs" actually practice their ancestral faith regularly. Boyer puts their percentage at no higher than 8: "About the same as the Christians," he said." On the other hand, 50 percent observe the holy month of Ramadan. "This month of daytime fasting begins on November 17.

Tariq Ramadan believes that "many more" attend the country's 1,400 mosques regularly and pray five times per day, as prescribed by the Koran. "80 percent observe Ramadan," he added.

At any rate, he stressed that there was a fascinating link between education and religious practice: "Our research shows that the most educated French Muslims are also returning to the practice of their faith. This in turn raises their moral consciousness, which makes them better citizens."