PARIS, 21 April 2004 — In its latest crackdown on radical Muslims, France has deported an imam to Algeria and closed down mosques in Chatenay-Malabry and Clamart, and its justice minister wants to take steps against a Muslim cleric who sanctioned spousal abuse.
Abdelkader Bouziane, imam of a mosque in the eastern city of Lyon, caused an uproar when he told the April issue of a local magazine, Lyon Mag, that he was polygamous, believed that “beating your wife is authorized by the Qur’an,” and expressed the hope that “the entire world becomes Muslim.”
The Interior Ministry said in a statement yesterday that Bouziane had been arrested and sent to a holding area at Lyon airport under a deportation order issued in February on the grounds of societal harmony. It said “the government will not tolerate public comments against human rights, which attack human dignity and in particular the dignity of women, calls to hatred or to violence, or justification of terrorism.”
French Justice Minister Dominique Perben announced yesterday he asked his ministry’s criminal affairs division to see if it can act against Bouziane. The imam had told the magazine that Muslim women could be stoned and beaten by their husbands — in the legs or the stomach but not in the face. He also said an Islamic republic might be good for France “because people would be happier if they were allowed to become closer to Allah”.
Perben made it quite clear on French public television that he plans to crack down on imams intent on introducing fundamentalism to France. He had already deported an imam in the city of Brest accused of “being in relation with organizations promoting terrorist acts,” he said, and shut down two mosques in the Hauts-de-Seine department.
Perben said the tenor of the mosques was “diametrically opposed” to the Republican values that he wants French Muslim leaders to preach. On yesterday morning’s “Quatre Verites” (Four Truths) talk show on France 2, Perben took up the case of Bouziane, the 52-year-old imam of Venissieux.
The expulsion comes in the wake of the expulsion Abdelkader Yahia Cherif (no relation), who had spent four years preaching at a mosque in Brest, in Brittany, and was expelled last Thursday.
