Imagine the embarrassment of French authorities when they discover that this kind of preaching is not “extremist,” but standard, mainstream Islam. But by then it is likely to be far too late.
“The Salafist mosque of Obernai in the sights of Beauvau,” translated from “La mosquée salafiste d’Obernai dans le viseur de Beauvau,” by Christophe Cornevin and Jean Chichizola, Le Figaro, September 28, 2022 (thanks to Medforth):
The Ministry of the Interior is not letting up the pressure on the radical Islam front. According to our information, Gérald Darmanin requested that the mosque in Obernai (Bas-Rhin) will be closed. “This place of worship constitutes a place that facilitates the spread of a radical ideology, in particular through the statements of its imam, who shows an obvious hostility towards French society, spreads provocative statements hostile to republican values and encourages the faithful in this radical view,” assures Place Beauvau, which has targeted the imam. This fundamentalist cleric, who joined this mosque in 2017, is apparently known to have been practising radical proselytising in the Bas-Rhin département for about twelve years.
“Since his arrival, he has set about spreading a Salafist Islam that holds a retrograde view of Islam, is hostile to the West, multiplies provocative statements towards French society whose values he rejects, and thus encourages identitarian withdrawal and separatism,” the same source says.
Discrimination against Jews, homosexuals and women
The Salafist legitimises polygamy and calls for discrimination against Jews, homosexuals and women, towards whom he also justifies the violence committed by their husbands, especially in the case of adultery,” according to the Ministry of the Interior. The cleric is also accused of “also legitimizing the use of violence against cartoonists and taking pleasure in the attacks on them; he makes conspiratorial comments about them and declares that they are orchestrated by the Islamophobic French state.”
According to Place Beauvau, these “statements and actions are all the more serious because the imam has a strong influence among young people who have been converted and radicalized under his influence, with some leaving France to study in Koranic schools in Egypt or Yemen.” Finally, the Interior Ministry analysts regretted that “all these statements and actions have never been the subject of any condemnation or repression by the chairman or vice-chairman of the association that manages this place of worship, or by its other members, so it must be assumed that they approve of them.”
