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PARIS (Reuters) – France on Tuesday ordered the temporary closure of a mosque on the outskirts of Paris as part of a crackdown on hatred-inciting Muslims following the beheading of a teacher who showed his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
The Great Mosque of Pantin, a low-income suburb on the northeastern outskirts of the capital, had shared a video on its Facebook page prior to the attack venting hatred against history professor Samuel Paty.
Police posted notices of the closure order outside the mosque when authorities promised a harsh response against broadcasters of hate messages, radicalized sermon preachers and foreigners believed to pose a threat to the security of France.
The six-month order had “the sole purpose of preventing acts of terrorism,” said the notice issued by the head of the Seine-Saint-Denis department.
The beheading of a public servant by a suspected Islamist for his use of religious satire to explore with students the debate around freedom of expression, a principle of democracy deeply cherished in secular France, has convulsed the country and shocked the nation. world.
President Emmanuel Macron is increasingly concerned about what he calls Islamist separatism – the attempt by hostile elements within France’s large Muslim community to impose conservative Islamic beliefs on the traditional values of the French Republic in some communities.
“ENEMY WITHIN”
Interior Minister Gerald Darmain said this week that France was facing an “internal enemy”.
The rector of the Great Mosque of Panin, M’hammed Henniche, regretted this weekend sharing the video on social media, after it emerged that Paty had become the victim of a vicious online intimidation campaign even before to be killed.
In the video, the Muslim father of one of Paty’s students said that the history teacher had pointed out the Muslim students and asked them to leave his class before showing the cartoons. He called Paty a bully and said he wanted the teacher to retire.
Henniche told Agence France Presse that he had shared the video, shot by the father of a student at Paty’s school, not to support the complaint but out of concern for Muslim children.
The student’s father is now in police custody.
Reuters calls to the mosque on Tuesday went unanswered.
“There is no place for violence in our religion,” the mosque said in a statement posted on Facebook on Monday. “We strongly condemn this savagery.”
A Pantin resident, who called herself Maya and said her husband prayed at the mosque, said the closure was “sad for our community.”
(Reporting by Tangi Salaun; Editing by Richard Lough and Gareth Jones)
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