France has shut down a mosque for a six-month period amid an ongoing drive against Muslims and their places of worship.<\/p>\n
The Al-Farouk Mosque in Pessac district near the city of Bordeaux in southwestern France was closed for allegedly defending "radical Islam" and “spreading Salafist ideology,” the Gironde governorate said Monday in a statement.<\/p>\n
The statement accused mosque authorities of giving sermons calling for non-compliance with French laws and legitimizing terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n
It also accused them of spreading messages containing hate against Israel as well as supporting terrorist organizations or people who defend "radical Islam."<\/p>\n
In August, France’s highest constitutional authority approved a controversial “anti-separatism” law that has been criticized for singling out Muslims, striking down just two of its articles.<\/p>\n
The bill was passed by the National Assembly in July, despite strong opposition from both rightist and leftist lawmakers.<\/p>\n
The government claims that the law is intended to strengthen France's secular system, but critics believe that it restricts religious freedom and marginalizes Muslims.<\/p>\n
The law has been criticized for targeting France's Muslim community – the largest in Europe, with 3.35 million members – and imposing restrictions on many aspects of their lives.<\/p>\n
It allows officials to intervene in mosques and associations responsible for their administration as well as control the finances of Muslim-affiliated associations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It also restricts the educational choices of Muslims by making homeschooling subject to official permission.<\/p>\n
Under the law, patients are prohibited from choosing their doctors based on gender for religious or other reasons and "secularism education" has been made compulsory for all civil servants.<\/p>\n
France has been criticized by international organizations and NGOs, especially the UN, for targeting and marginalizing Muslims with the law.\/aa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Al-Farouk Mosque in Pessac district near the city of Bordeaux in southwestern France was closed for allegedly defending “radical Islam” and \u201cspreading Salafist ideology,\u201d the Gironde governorate said Monday in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":58891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-news-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iumsonline.cloud\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}