Where is Hassan Iquioussen? Wanted since the validation, Tuesday August 30, of his expulsion from French territory by the Council of State, the Muslim preacher, regularly presented as an imam, is likely to have taken refuge in Belgium, according to the scenario favored by the prefect of Hauts-de-France, Georges-François Leclerc, Wednesday August 31. He is now the subject of a European arrest warrant.
Hassan Iquioussen is accused of anti-Semitic and misogynistic remarks by the Minister of the Interior. The Paris administrative court had initially urgently suspended the expulsion of this 58-year-old man, reputed to be close to the Muslim Brotherhood (an Islamist movement founded in 1928 in Egypt) and filed S by the DGSI “for eighteen months”, according to Gerald Darmanin.
Born on June 2, 1964 in Denain (Nord), the preacher is the father of five children, all French, and the grandfather of fifteen grandchildren. At his majority, he decided not to opt for French nationality and to keep only his Moroccan nationality, even “if he only knows his so-called country of origin through short vacations”explained his lawyer, Lucie Simon, in a statement at the end of July.
The 50-year-old claims to have tried twice to recover his French nationality, without success, when he had benefited since his majority from a residence permit renewable every ten years. According to him, his second application was refused in 1999 because of his “very strong ties” with the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF), which has since become Muslims of France (MF).
The expulsion order, dated July 29 and which franceinfo was able to consult, accuses him “a proselytizing speech interspersed with remarks inciting hatred and discrimination and carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the Republic”.
In a recording dated the same day, Hassan Iquioussen claims to be “French in the heart and in the soul, in thought and in [sa] culture”. The camera-facing video has been viewed 228,000 times on his YouTube channel. It is also thanks to the famous online platform that he has built his reputation: no less than 178,000 subscribers (for 33 million views) follow his courses and sermons on Islam in everyday life. Conferences that occupy the days of the preacher, whose income comes from “of his real estate investments”explains the Ministry of the Interior to Parisian.
At the town hall of Denain, a former mining town fifteen kilometers from Valenciennes (North), the evocation of these videos leaves a bitter taste. On July 30, 2016, “we opened his YouTube channel and discovered his videos on homosexuals, Jews, the Armenian genocide, women and the relativization of the attacks”, remembers Yohan Senez, former chief of staff of the socialist mayor, Anne-Lise Dufour. Sequences that franceinfo was able to view.
In a video entitled “Choosing your wife well” and published on November 12, 2013, Hassan Iquioussen develops his vision of the relationship between women and men, arguing that “men became women and women became men” by mentioning “girls who are more into football than boys”.
“Our Western society has done everything to ensure that women do not play their first, fundamental and essential role, which is to be a wife, a mother.”
Hassan Iquioussenin a video dated November 2013
In another recording dated October 5, 2012, Hassan Iquioussen denies the Armenian genocide, recognized by France since a 2001 law. “If the law [pénalisant la négation du génocide arménien] had passed, I could not have said that the Armenian genocide does not exist, because the law condemns me. While there, I can have fun. (…) There was no genocide and I have the historical evidence.”
The Council of State, which justified the expulsion measure by its “anti-Semitic remarks” and “his discourse on the inferiority of woman and her submission to man”, however rejected “several reasons given by the Minister [de l’Intérieur]“, to expel Hassan Iquioussen“in particular the questioning of the reality of the terrorist attacks and its rejection of the laws of the Republic in favor of Islamic law”.
“He advances one foot and retreats two. He has a different speech according to the interlocutors”observes Bernard Godard, a former civil servant at the Ministry of the Interior and author of The Muslim Question in France (Fayard, 2015). Yohan Senez, denounces him, the “double speech” of the wanted man, citing an episode from the year 2016. Hassan Iquioussen was invited by the mayor of Denain, in the company of elected officials and representatives of religions, to pay tribute to the priest Jacques Hamel, assassinated four days earlier during the attack in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray (Seine- Maritime). “He made a speech sideways, saying that Islam was a religion of peace and tolerance. And in the afternoon, after a photo published on social networks, his presence caused controversy compared to his videos”remembers the former chief of staff.
“He is not an imam, because he has never led the prayer. From time to time, he preaches in mosques, but he is not a theologian. He is a lecturer, an agitator of ideas “adds Bernard Godard, who draws a parallel with Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss Islamologist and grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who is also accused of rape by four women.
The Northerner had done talk about him as early as 2004 for remarks anti-Semites duringa speech on Palestine. He developed the thesis of a plot between the Zionists and Hitler to encourage the settlement of Jews in Palestine, qualified as“misers” and D’“ingrate”. The Minister of the Interior at the time, Dominique de Villepin, denounced a speech “unacceptable”. Hassan Iquioussen had recognized “displaced” words and apologized. “Anti-Semitism is a horror”, he admitted.
But Place Beauvau, the episode has not been forgotten: the expulsion order of July 29 mentions in particular this speech of 2004. “He further reiterated his remarks at two conferences in September 2014, at which he referred to a ‘Jewish conspiracy'”is it written in the enforceable decision.
If one of the sons of Hassan Iquioussen joined the municipal council of Lourches, under the socialist label, according to The Parisian, the preacher never formally engaged in politics. He “call people to vote”explains his lawyer in the columns of Figaro. Me Lucie Simon completed her remarks before the Council of State, where she described her client’s commitment.
“Hassan Iquioussen is a politician, he defends a political Islam, in the search for a combination between French and Muslim identity.”
Me Lucie Simon, lawyer for Hassan Iquioussenbefore the Council of State
She concedes, however, that the preacher, who has never been convicted for his positions, is a man “conservative”, who makes a speech “retrograde”, according to comments reported by the legal news site. The 50-year-old says he is, for his part, the victim of a “injustice” and a “administrative harassment”, in his video posted on July 29. He claims not to “to be anti-Semitic” and is defined as “progressive” on the question of women and homosexuals. “The question is whether the threat he poses is so serious that he should be deported”valued his lawyer. For the French authorities, the question is now settled.