PARIS, 5 May 2004 — French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin over the weekend said France would continue its policy of expelling radical imams. De Villepin during a meeting with the presidents of the regional councils of the Conseil francais du culte Musulman, a body representing the country’s five million Muslims, said France would no longer tolerate imams like the recently expelled Abdelkader Bouziane and Mihdat Guler.
Bouziane, whose expulsion to Algeria was last week ruled illegal, is reported to be awaiting a fresh visa at the French Consulate in Algiers, while Imam Guler is under house arrest in the Paris region awaiting expulsion to Turkey after his request for political asylum was turned down Monday.
De Villepin said he found it “intolerable” that France’s Muslim community had suffered an upsurge of racist attacks in recent weeks but vowed to “pursue the expulsion of Muslim extremists.” He insisted that “firmness against those who preach violence is the best guarantee for a serene practice of the Muslim religion in France.”
Police sources were quoted on RTL radio as saying “another thirty radical imams” could also be expelled “in the near future.”
According to Dalil Boubakeur, the president of the CFCM, the number of imams practicing in France who are “unacceptable” total some 20 percent of the country’s 1,400 Muslim clerics, meaning that in his eyes 280 should eventually be relieved of their duties.
Boubakeur, who is also rector of the Grande Mosquee de Paris as well as a close personal friend of French President Jacques Chirac, said these did not “correspond to the criteria recognized by their religion and by Muslim theologians.”
Boubakeur said he agreed that the country’s imams should be trained and “authorized” to practice in France. The training of imams in France was at the center of talks with Premier Jean-Pierre Raffarin who reportedly agreed that the CFCM should exercise greater control over the training process of imams, many of whom are.
Meanwhile, Adrien Namigohar, the attorney for Imam Guler, the 45-year-old imam of a controversial mosque in Paris, said the expulsion of his client was an electoral ploy.
“My client’s arrest is nothing but a political and electoral ploy,” he said — a reference to the June 13 elections to the European Parliament, where Turkey’s admission to the European Union will be a key issue for French voters.
