French mosque closed in crackdown on radical Islam
A view of the Grand Mosque de Pantin which will close following a request by the prefect, in the northeastern suburbs of Paris on Tuesday.
French authorities said on Tuesday they would close a Paris mosque in a clampdown on radical Islam that has yielded over a dozen arrests following the beheading of a history teacher who had shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
The mosque in a densely-populated suburb northeast of Paris had published a video on its Facebook page days before Friday’s gruesome murder, railing against teacher Samuel Paty’s choice of material for a class discussion on freedom of expression, said a source close to the investigation.
The interior ministry said the mosque in Pantin, which has some 1,500 worshippers, would be shut from tonight for six months. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has vowed there would be “not a minute’s respite for enemies of the Republic.”
The order came after police on Monday launched a series of raids targeting extreme Islamist networks, mainly in the Paris region.
The head of the mosque, M’hammed Henniche, said on Tuesday he had shared the video not to “validate” the complaint about the cartoons, but out of fear that Muslim children were singled out in class.
Paty, 47, was attacked on his way home from the junior high school where he taught in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, 40 kilometers northwest of Paris. A photo of the teacher and a message confessing to his murder was found on the mobile phone of his killer, 18-year-old Chechen Abdullakh Anzorov, who also posted images of the decapitated body on Twitter. He was shot dead by police soon after the attack.
Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer said yesterday that Paty would be posthumously bestowed France’s highest order of merit, the Legion of Honour, for having been “martyred” because of his profession.
The murder was preceded by a fierce online campaign against Paty and the school, led by the father of a schoolgirl who accused the teacher of disseminating “pornography” for showing a cartoon of the prophet naked. The school said Paty had given Muslim pupils the choice to leave the classroom.
The father is among the 16 people arrested after the killing, along with a known radical Islamist and four members of Anzorov’s family.
Police said on Tuesday the father was in contact with the 18-year-old killer; they had exchanged messages on WhatsApp, but police did not say how they come into contact.
Darmanin accused the father and the radical of having issued a “fatwa” against the teacher. Four pupils suspected of accepting payment for pointing Paty out to his killer were also taken into custody on Monday.
Paty’s beheading was the second knife attack since a trial started last month over the Charlie Hebdo killings. In the September attack, two people were wounded outside the publication’s former offices.
A silent march was planed in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine on Tuesday evening in homage to Paty, while parliament observed a minute of silence in the afternoon.
French President Emmanuel Macron will attend an official homage with Paty’s family on Wednesday at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
