The government spokesman, Olivier Véran, considered on Sunday that if the Council of State rejected the request for the expulsion of the preacher Hassan Iquioussen, “it would be a very bad signal”, calling for “absolutely uncompromising with the radicalized”.
The Council of State, the highest French administrative court, must decide at the beginning of next week on the request of the Ministry of the Interior which intends to have a decision of the administrative court of Paris suspended the request for expulsion of the preacher Hassan Iquioussen .
“Extremely dark radicalized remarks”
This had been taken at the end of July because of “a proselytizing speech interspersed with remarks inciting hatred and discrimination and carrying a vision of Islam contrary to the values of the Republic”, according to the Ministry of l Interior, which reproached him in particular for “a speech with a particularly virulent anti-Semitic content” and his sermons advocating the “submission” of women “for the benefit of men”.
Olivier Véran, while acknowledging not having “to judge and comment, even less in anticipation, on a court decision”, considered that “the French would not understand that an imam who makes radicalized remarks of an extreme blackness, with a capacity for nuisance, and which hates the Republic so much, retains its place in the Republic”.
“No concession” with the radicalized
“Let it be the Republic itself, through the voice of the Council of State, which says so…”, he continued, saying “for the expulsion” and “absolutely without concessions whatsoever with the radicalized who attack the Republic. The expulsion order also referred to the encouragement “to separatism” and the “contempt for certain republican values such as secularism and the democratic functioning of French society”.
Hassan Iquioussen, born in France 58 years ago but of Moroccan nationality, for his part considered before the administrative courts that his expulsion constituted “a disproportionate attack” on his “private and family life”.