The French Ministry of the Interior has ordered the closure of a mosque promoting radical Islam in the 11,000-inhabitant Allonnes town near the city of Le Mans in western France, where armed jihad was "legitimized" and treated as accepted.
According to the police statement, the religious place was operated by two Islamic associations and regularly visited by around three hundred people.
"There is evidence that activity and speech at a religious site frequented by people belonging to or close to the radical Islamist movement legitimized armed jihad, martyrdom, the commission of acts of terrorism, the use of violence, hatred and discrimination, and the imposition of Sharia."
- reads the announcement of the county of Sarthes in western France. There is also a Koranic school in the Alonnes mosque, where about 110 children study. According to the prefecture, the children were told about armed jihad in a positive light, and based on this, the mosque is classified as a place of indoctrination and "influenced teaching". According to investigative sources, the mosque had been under surveillance by secret services for weeks.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced in an interview with the daily newspaper Le Figaro in September that proceedings had been initiated against six mosques suspected of propagating radical Islam, and that additional places of worship are expected to be closed by the authorities in the near future.
The Minister of the Interior said that since the government announced its program against Islamist separatism two years ago, 89 religious places have been monitored for suspected radicalism, and a third of them have been closed. The head of the ministry added that since the election of Emmanuel Macron as the head of state, the police had conducted about 24,000 checks and liquidated 650 places or organizations visited by extremists.
MTI
