France takes on radical Islamism: PM to SHUT DOWN Salafist mosques to wipe out ‘poison’ of jihadis, by Siobhan McFadyen. At last the French are doing something; they have been too supine for too long.
FRENCH Prime Minister Manuel Valls says the country is to shut down mosques, cut foreign funding and police the content delivered in sermons in a massive crackdown on Islamic fundamentalism.
The comments come following the murder of 86-year-old French Catholic priest Father Jacques Hamel who was killed on the altar during morning mass last Tuesday and three separate massacres in the country in just over a year.
In a newspaper interview Prime Minister Valls says the Republic has been forced to intervene to drive out the “poison” of radical Islamism.
And he has announced plans to shut down mosques supporting Salafism, an ultra-orthodox religious-political ideology based on a belief in “physical” jihadism practised by some followers of the Sunni faith.
He said: “All Salafists are not jihadists … but almost all are jihadist Salafists… A terrible poison has spread. Slowly, insidiously, on a background of influences from abroad and rising communalism, developed against a model of society, a model against the Republic and its values. Many Muslims in France are taken hostage by the fundamentalist Salafism, who worship a weapon against others. The places of worship that house preachers will be closed systematically. It is necessary to rethink the training of imams and chaplains completely. France must become a European centre of excellence in the teaching of Islamic theology.”
A mosque is a building. If the French ban them, the jihadis meet elsewhere. The problem is not the buildings, it’s the meme.
Are not laws against hate speech and inciting violence enough? Perhaps the French could pay for spies to sit in mosques (or churches?) at random, and charge and jail the people who break the law?
Or let’s start a discussion about stopping any groups which hold that it is ok to lie to people outside the group, impose the death penalty for people who leave the group, have a history of conquest and disrespecting people outside the group, and so on. Can an intolerant group ever fit into a tolerant society?
That’s the idea of countries — incompatible people and cultures can live in their own countries.
