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SECURITY

French court backs closure of Muslim NGO for ‘inciting hatred’

France's highest administrative court on Wednesday rejected appeals against the dissolution of a Muslim NGO and the six-month closing down of a mosque ordered by the government after the beheading of a teacher by an Islamist radical.

French court backs closure of Muslim NGO for 'inciting hatred'
A view of the Grand Mosque de Pantin, shut for six months. Photo: AFP

President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to crack down on radical Islamist activity in France following the October 16th murder of teacher Samuel Paty who had showed his class cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

The Council of State ruled that the dissolution of the BarakaCity NGO as ordered by the government could be justified on account of comments “inciting discrimination, violence and hatred” by the group's head, it said in a statement.

The government had ordered the dissolution of BarakaCity in late October, accusing it of links to “the radical Islamist movement” and “justifying terrorist acts”.

It said that the group had published violent and discriminatory comments on its own social media accounts and through that of its founder and leader Idriss Sihamedi.

But the group, which insists it has a strictly humanitarian mission to help millions of people around the world, denied the charges and appealed the decision.

In a separate ruling, the court also confirmed the closure for six months of the mosque in Pantin, to the north of Paris, following an appeal against the government's ruling by the local Muslim association.

The court said that the closure was justified as the comments made by the mosque's officials and the ideas it discussed were a “provocation” that could lead to acts of violence.

It has notably been accused of sharing a video posted by the father of a pupil at Paty's school that publicly attacked the teacher for showing the cartoons in class.

An imam who was on duty at the time had received training in a fundamentalist institute in Yemen and has since left the mosque.

The mosque's lawyers William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth expressed dismay at the ruling saying that it was prepared to give guarantees to allow its rapid reopening.

Macron's approach has won praise from supporters inside France who say he is showing the courage to confront radical Islamist activity that has been ignored for too long.

But critics, including some in English-language media, have accused the president of going too far and adopting a heavy-handed approach towards France's largest religious minority.

Member comments

  1. well done France & Macron the rest of the world need to follow your fair and reasoned resistance to violence in the name of any religion

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RELIGION

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

The Sunni Muslim world's most prestigious educational institution, Al-Azhar in Egypt, has called for the boycott of Swedish and Dutch products after far-right activists destroyed Korans in those countries.

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

Al-Azhar, in a statement issued on Wednesday, called on “Muslims to boycott Dutch and Swedish products”.

It also urged “an appropriate response from the governments of these two countries” which it charged were “protecting despicable and barbaric crimes in the name of ‘freedom of expression'”.

Swedish-Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan on Saturday set fire to a copy of the Muslim holy book in front of Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm, raising tensions as Sweden courts Ankara over its bid to join Nato.

EXPLAINED:

The following day, Edwin Wagensveld, who heads the Dutch chapter of the German anti-Islam group Pegida, tore pages out of the Koran during a one-man protest outside parliament.

Images on social media also showed him walking on the torn pages of the holy book.

The desecration of the Koran sparked strong protests from Ankara and furious demonstrations in several capitals of the Muslim world including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the Koran burning, expressing “deep concern at the recurrence of such events and the recent Islamophobic escalation in a certain number of European countries”.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson condemned Paludan’s actions as “deeply disrespectful”, while the United States called it “repugnant”.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Monday said the burning was the work of “a provocateur” who “may have deliberately sought to put distance between two close partners of ours – Turkey and Sweden”.

On Tuesday, Turkey postponed Nato accession talks with Sweden and Finland, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Stockholm for allowing weekend protests that included the burning of the Koran.

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