The mosque in the city of Allonnes in northwest France on Tuesday government announced in a press release a six-month closure.
The bank accounts of the mosque’s administrators were also seized, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in a statement on Tuesday. The mosque had the capacity to host 300 worshippers.
The statement claims that officials of the mosque had been planning to conduct terrorist attacks in France and the closure had come to prevent such alleged terrorist attacks.
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“The sermons propagated in this mosque cultivating hatred toward France,” Darmanin wrote on Twitter, defending the closure. He added that seven associations or religious buildings will be “disbanded by the end of the year.”
Stressing that 92 of the 2,500 mosques in France were closed as a result of the inspections, Darmanin also said that since September 2020, residence permits of 36,000 foreigners have been canceled due to the “threat to the public.”
France has shut down one-third of 89 inspected mosques since November 2020. The country’s highest constitutional authority approved a controversial “anti-separatism” law that has been criticized for singling out Muslims, striking down just two of its articles in August.
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The bill was passed by the National Assembly in July, despite strong opposition from both rightist and leftist lawmakers. The law allows officials to intervene in mosques and associations responsible for their administration, as well as control the finances of Muslim-affiliated associations and NGOs.
There are currently about 2,300 mosques in France with a further 200 to 250 planned. Even though Catholicism makes up a multitude of the citizenry, Islam will continue to grow, even with zero population growth.
