France ordered the temporary closure of a mosque outside Paris on Tuesday as part of a crackdown on people who are suspected of inciting hatred, after the killing of a teacher who showed his class caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
The Grand Mosque of Pantin, in a low-income suburb on the capital’s northeastern outskirts, had shared a video on its Facebook page before the attack that vented hatred against history teacher Samuel Paty.
Police plastered notices of the closure order outside the mosque as the authorities promised a tough response against the disseminators of hate messages, preachers of controversial sermons and foreigners believed to pose a security threat to France.
The six-month order was “for the sole purpose of preventing acts of terrorism”, the notice issued by the head of the Seine-Saint-Denis department read.
The beheading of Paty, a public servant, for his use of religious satire to explore with students the debate surrounding freedom of expression has convulsed the country and shocked the world.
The killing came weeks after President Emmanuel Macron expressed concerns about what he calls “Islamist separatism”.
In a speech earlier this month, Macron said “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country” – comments that led to a
backlash from the world’s Muslims, who claimed he was pandering to the far right.
France’s fragile relationship with its Muslim minority, the largest in Europe, is at breaking point.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said this week that France was confronted by an “enemy within”.
Meanwhile, there are rising concerns of collective punishment regarding France’s response to Friday’s killing.
Darmanin, in a post on Twitter, threatened to close the Collective against Islamophobia in France, an anti-racist civil society group, prompting concerns from activists.
“We are concerned by the political pressures, at the highest level of the French government, and intimidation campaign targeting a human rights organisation whose work is to address discrimination and hate crimes against Muslim citizens,” said the European network against racism.
The rector of the Grand Mosque of Pantin, M’hammed Henniche, this weekend expressed regret over sharing the video on social media, after it emerged Paty had become the victim of a vicious online campaign of intimidation even before he was killed.
In the video, the Muslim father of one of Paty’s students said the history teacher had singled out Muslim students and asked them to leave his class before showing the cartoons. He called Paty a thug and said he wanted the teacher removed.
Henniche told Agence France Presse that he had shared the video, filmed by the father of a student at Paty’s school, not to endorse the complaint but out of concern for Muslim children.
The student’s father is now in police custody.
“There’s no room for violence in our religion”, the mosque said in a statement published on Facebook on Monday. “We strongly condemn this savagery.”
One Pantin resident, who gave her name as Maya and said her husband prayed at the mosque, called the closure “sad for our community”.
Source-
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020...SCvBID9oazrS2g3qM7Oq048dTvn1u25gGqk5TJKz0XqkE
