When it reopens, it will preach loyalty to the French secular state, right? Won’t it? Those six months will fix everything, won’t they?
“The Beauvais mosque closed for six months, Gérald Darmanin announces,” translated from “La mosquée de Beauvais fermée pour six mois, annonce Gérald Darmanin,” Le Figaro, December 14, 2021:
Last Friday, December 10, the prefecture of Oise reportedly announced the closure for six months of the Bilal mosque, located not far from the city center.
The imam of the place of worship, built in 2014 with the support of the town hall, is said to have made remarks inciting hatred against Christians, Jews and homosexuals.
Tuesday, December 14, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced the closure of a Muslim place of worship in Beauvais (Oise), due to Islamist sermons. “Today we have initiated the closure of the Beauvais mosque, (which is) completely unacceptable which fights Christians, homosexuals, Jews,” he declared on Cnews, confirming information from Courrier Picard.
The prefecture of Oise reportedly announced Friday, December 10 the closure for six months of the Bilal mosque, located not far from the city center. The mosque was built from 2014, encouraged by Senator-Mayor LR Caroline Cayeux. Within the framework of an adversarial procedure, the persons in charge of the association “Espoir et fraternité,” which manages the place of worship, have the possibility of defending themselves to the prefect within the following ten days. But as the lawyer of the association Samim Bolaky reminds the Courrier Picard, “in the vast majority of cases, this results in a closure.”
State services in the Oise have identified “several sermons that incite hatred, violence and condone jihad” on the part of the main imam. The speeches are mostly transcribed on YouTube by the great mosque, which facilitated the investigative work. “The imam maintains that the remarks in question relate to reported facts dating back more than 1400 years, in particular on the first two main wars in the history of Islam, hence a particular lexical field. He probably did not have the delicacy to speak in the past tense,” explains his lawyer. The survey also shows radical discourse, in particular on homosexuality. “The imam only gives the point of view of religion to a question put to him. This question was: is homosexuality allowed in religion?” explains Samim Bolaky.
If the prefect decides to close the place of worship, the association could rely on the administrative court, judging a closure “completely disproportionate” and coming “to penalize the entire Muslim community of Beauvais,” further indicates the lawyer.
