Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin had accused her of attacking the “republican model and France”: five months after its closure for radical sermons, the Beauvais mosque (north) has just obtained the right to reopen, with new imams and commitments to respect republican values.
The interim judge of the administrative court of Amiens ordered Monday the “provisional reopening” of the great mosque of Beauvais, highlighting “the changes that have occurred” since its closure in December. Eviction of the implicated imam, suppression of sermons on social networks, modification of the functioning of the association: the judge considered that the changes that have occurred since the closure justified the reopening of the mosque. Otherwise, this would constitute a “serious and manifestly illegal attack on freedom of worship”.
The mosque, which welcomes 400 faithful, had been closed for six months at the end of December by an order from the Oise prefecture because of the sermons deemed radical, between April and December 2021, by Imam Eddy Lecocq, a young convert trained in Saudi Arabia. These sermons “promote jihad”, encourage the faithful to “identity withdrawal” and call “to hatred”, in particular of Jews, Christians or homosexuals, specified the prefecture in the decree.
France has been hit by numerous jihadist attacks, which have killed more than 265 people since 2015.
Fifteen days earlier, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin had declared on CNews to have “triggered the closure” of this mosque “which fights Christians, homosexuals, Jews”. The lawyer for the association managing the mosque, Me Sefen Guez Guez, welcomed to AFP a “decision of appeasement”, but regretted that the reopening was not authorized earlier.
Representing the State, the prefect of Oise (north) Corinne Orzechowski, for her part, was “delighted” that “the period of closure of the mosque” made it possible to “guarantee respect” by the association “for laws and values of the Republic” and “to reduce the risk of repetition of abuses”.
The prefecture “will be attentive to the sustainability of the commitments made”, she assures in a press release. At the end of April, the Council of State had inflicted another setback on the Interior Ministry by authorizing a mosque in Pessac, near Bordeaux, to remain open, despite a request for temporary closure because of suspicions of “Salafist ideology”. .
The Council of State also suspended the execution of the decrees dissolving two pro-Palestinian associations which the ministry accused of “incitement to hatred” and “provocation to terrorist acts”. In 2021, Parliament adopted a law aimed at combating “Islamist separatism”, allowing, among other things, to close places of worship, religious schools or even to ban extremist preachers.
France has been hit by numerous jihadist attacks, which have killed more than 265 people since 2015.