The faithful of the Al-Farouk mosque in Pessac (Gironde) will be able to attend the prayer on Friday April 8. They won their case in administrative court. The court suspended the closure order issued for six months by the prefecture for promoting“radical Islam” and one “Salafist ideology”. The Ministry of the Interior immediately appealed against this decision. On the other hand, he gave up closing the Al Madina Al Mounawara mosque, in Cannes (Alpes-Maritimes), announced in January by Gérald Darmanin. The Minister then denounced the holding of “anti-Semitic remarks” within the place of worship.
Does this reversal sign a change in the policy of closing mosques, reinforced since the start of the five-year term? This was one of candidate Emmanuel Macron’s promises in 2017: “We will fight the jihadist ideology” with the “closure of places of worship that promote jihadist propaganda” and “the dissolution of the associations concerned”. Proposal associated with the idea that the “jihadism feeds on a social climate, on a criticism of common republican values”. Five years, three laws and three Ministers of the Interior later, it is difficult to interpret the quantified assessment of these measures, which the last tenant of Place Beauvau applies to communicate.
Of the 2,623 mosques and prayer rooms established on the national territory, nearly “90 were suspected of separatism” at the beginning of 2021, according to the Ministry of the Interior. After a series of checks, 36 remained open because “the law of the Republic was respected there”22 were closed and 31 “are subject to further investigation”. But, by the admission of the majority, a number of closures have been carried out for non-compliance with administrative standards (urban planning, health, fire safety rules, etc.) and not for reasons of radicalization or separatism.
Since the wave of attacks committed on the territory from 2015, a legislative arsenal has nevertheless been put in place to facilitate these closures. In October 2017, a few weeks after the attack by Operation Sentinel soldiers in Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine), the Silt law transposes into common law provisions hitherto reserved for the state of emergency to fight against terrorism. In particular, it authorizes the prefects to close places of worship for six months. In 2021, the anti-terrorism bill (Prat) reinforces these measures, by allowing the administrative authority to also close premises dependent on mosques.
The same year, the law “consolidating respect for the principles of the Republic”, first called the “separatism” law, was introduced. Closures of places of worship are authorized outside of any state of emergency or terrorist threat, for a period of two months, if hateful or racist speech is held there. A shift is taking place towards a fight against “an atmospheric jihadism”, in the words of political scientist Gilles Kepel. The text increases the control of the financing of cults to avoid any “foreign interference”. It also widens the possibilities of dissolution of associations. Fifteen have been in the past five years, including the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) and BarakaCity. “The criteria for justifying these closures are less demanding than those imposed by the Silt law, in the context of the fight against terrorism”estimates the jurist Julien Jeanneney, professor at Sciences Po Strasbourg.
Despite this legislative arsenal, the administrative procedures for closing mosques are regularly denounced by those who suffer them. They are mainly based on “white notes” from the intelligence services, as several judicial sources tell franceinfo. These, “neither signed nor dated”are based on “private electronic data (images or mobile phone browsing history) or on the testimony of informants.‘do not always have the legal and factual rigor on which all evidence must be based’estimated in 2018 the UN special rapporteur on the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the fight against terrorism, after a visit to France.
“These notes unduly challenge the presumption of innocence, have the effect of reversing the burden of proof and weaken the rights of defense in court.”
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, UN Special Rapporteurin a report
In the Pessac file, to which franceinfo had partial access, “90% of grievances [de la préfecture] are linked to Facebook posts that have been removed”, says lawyer Sefen Guez Guez, who represents the association managing the mosque. He denounces “a gap between serious accusations and the real situation” and sees in this closure decision “a political order” of the Ministry of the Interior. “You do not close a mosque to close a mosque, but because serious remarks are made there or there are links with terrorist activities”we retort in the entourage of Gérald Darmanin. “This is where there is a risk of radicalization, this remains a focus, this is what comes up from the services”, supports Raphaël Gauvain, LREM deputy for Saône-et-Loire and rapporteur for the Silt law.
However, none of the mosques closed “has been the subject of a judicial investigation in connection with terrorism”, assures the association Action the rights of Muslims, in its report “Collective punishment”. If these administrative measures are not intended to punish offenses such as the apology of terrorism or the direct provocation to terrorism, they rarely give rise to the opening of a criminal investigation in parallel, confirms to franceinfo the Syndicat de la judiciary, which wonders about “the real danger of what is uttered in mosques”.
Have the closures made it possible to thwart Islamist attacks, dismantle a network or arrest terrorists? In Lunel (Hérault), affected by a wave of departures to Syria in 2014, some of the jihadists had attended the city mosque. But a first turning point came after the attacks of 2015. “Mosques are in the eye of the storm in France, so jihadists avoid them”emphasizes Farhad Khosrokhavar, director of the Radicalization Observatory at the House of Human Sciences. “Of the 1,900 French people who left to do jihad from 2013 to 2016, mosques are a starting point in 5% of casesnotes the sociologist. The majority is done through networks [sur] internet, by friends.”
The impact study carried out by parliamentarians on the Silt law agrees: “No closure has been pronounced taking into account only the comments made by the imam within the place of worship, these being now ‘smoothed’, to contain express condemnations of acts of terrorism. ” Why, then, focus on these closures? “It is a display measure to reassure the French”slice Nabila Asmane, lawyer of the mosque of Allonnes (Sarthe), closed for six months in October 2021 for “radical practice of Islam”.
The Samuel Paty affair is another turning point. The assassination of this history and geography teacher by the terrorist Abdoullakh Anzorov, on October 16, 2020, in the Paris region, supported “the received idea of a mechanical link between Muslim religious rigor and violent action”, analyzes Haoues Seniguer, lecturer at Sciences Po Lyon, specialist in Islamism. In question, in particular, the dissemination on the Facebook page of the Pantin mosque (Seine-Saint-Denis) of the video of a parent of a student relaying false remarks about this teacher and his course on the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. If the anti-terrorist justice system has not officially established a link between the terrorist and the former rector of the Pantin mosque – the investigation is still in progress – the place closed its doors for six months.
For its detractors, not only this policy “wrong target”, but it risks being counter-productive.
“Do the temporary advantages in closing a mosque, without further ado, outweigh the disadvantages of turning Muslims against society and participating in the withdrawal of a community?”
Farhad Khosrokhavar, sociologistat franceinfo
As the presidential election approaches, the political class remains cautious on the subject. “It is not on this that I would challenge the action of the government”, underlines the socialist Patrick Mennucci, co-author of an investigation report on the jihadist sectors. If he wonders about the “strategy”the deputy Les Républicains Julien Aubert considers “necessary” to send “a signal to all the other mosques” on the risk of hosting “a percentage of fanatical people”. The LR candidate, Valérie Pécresse, proposes to continue this policy of closures and dissolutions, like her far-right opponents, Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.
On the left, the subject is not explicitly mentioned in the programs, even if Yannick Jadot (EELV) wishes to link cults to the Ministry of Justice and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI) promises to fight all communitarianism and political use religions. As for Emmanuel Macron, he intends to continue “to deploy in such a way methodical” the “fight against separatism”including mosque closures, while promising the “overhaul of the republican integration model”, the social corollary of this policy. A promise already mentioned during the Mureaux speech, in October 2020. On April 24, he will know if he has five more years to implement it.