(Morocco World News) French authorities have shut down 9 mosques since the month of December. “Among the 18 places of worship that were particularly monitored at my request, 9 were closed down,” the French minister of interior [Gerald] Darmanin tweeted on January 15. The crackdown on Muslim places of worship is in line with the state’s “determined action against Islamist separatism.”
Since December 2020, the French government has launched a massive and unprecedented surveillance operation targeting Muslim mosques, schools, and civil society organizations. The security measures intended to fight what Darmanin calls “religious extremism.”
[Darmanin] announced on December 2 that 76 mosques were under investigation for being a threat to national security and for suspicions of “Islamist separatism.”
