The Beauvais mosque, a town of 50,000 inhabitants located 100 km north of Paris, will remain closed “for a period of six months”, according to the order of the prefecture of Oise. “This decree is enforceable after 48 hours,” said the prefecture.
A mosque in northern France has been closed over sermons “inciting hatred”, “violence” and “condoning jihad,” authorities told AFP on Tuesday. This decision comes after the announcement on December 14 by the French Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, of the launch of the procedure for the administrative closure of this mosque due to the radical nature of the sermons given there.
The authorities “reproach” the place of worship “for certain remarks made during the sermons by one of the imams of the mosque, who intervened on a voluntary basis”, explained to AFP Me Samim Bolaky, lawyer of the association Hope and fraternity that manages the place. He assures us that this imam has since been “suspended”.
The apology of jihad and combatants
This man, “presented as an occasional speaker, but who in reality acts as an appointed imam” would, according to the Interior Ministry, make remarks “condoning jihad and combatants, whom he describes as heroes”.
According to the ministry, his words “castigate” the “disbelievers and present Western societies as Islamophobic”. They push “the faithful to break with the Republic” and “incite hatred of homosexuals, Jews and Christians”.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, 2,623 mosques and prayer rooms are established in France. Among these places of worship, 99 “suspected of separatism” have been checked “in recent months”. 21 places of worship are closed for different reasons and six others, including the Beauvais mosque, are or have been the subject of an instruction to initiate a closure.
In November 2020, after new jihadist attacks – in particular the beheading of a teacher – which have left more than 265 dead since 2015 in France, President Emmanuel Macron launched an offensive against “separatism” and increased the pressure on the authorities leaders of Islam to fight foreign influence, radicalization and political Islam.
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