France has ordered the closure of a mosque in the north of the country because of what authorities told AFP on Tuesday was the radical nature of its imam’s preaching.
The mosque in Beauvais, a town of 50,000 people some 100 kilometres north of Paris, will remain shut for six months, according to the prefecture of the Oise region where Beauvais is located.It said the sermons there incite hatred, violence and “defend jihad”.
The move on the mosque, which has a congregation of about 400, comes two weeks after Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said he had triggered the procedure to close the site because the imam there “is targeting Christians, homosexuals and Jews” in his sermons.
This, the minister said, was “unacceptable”.Local authorities were legally bound to observe a 10-day period of information-gathering before taking action, but told AFP on Tuesday that the mosque would now be shut within two days.
Local daily Courrier Picard reported this month that the mosque’s imam was a recent convert to Islam.
A lawyer for the association managing the mosque told AFP that it had filed for an injunction to overturn the ban.
The lawyer, Samim Bolaky, said there would be a court hearing on the appeal within 48 hours.
The authorities said the imam, who the association claims had preached only occasionally and had now been suspended, was in fact a regular presence at the mosque, according to the official document citing the reasons for the closure seen by AFP.
