According to Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, France’s highest administrative court has approved the expulsion of an imam accused of “hate speech” to Morocco.
In “a major triumph for the republic,” Hassan Iquioussen “will be removed from the national territory,” Darmanin stated on Twitter, referencing the Council of State’s decision on Tuesday.
The interior ministry had ordered the imam’s deportation in late July due to his “particularly virulent anti-Semitic discourse” and sermons advocating women’s “submission” to men. The case reached the highest court after Paris magistrates denied that order.
Iquioussen, 58, broadcasts from his home in northern France to tens of thousands of viewers on Facebook and YouTube.
Although he was born in France, he is a citizen of Morocco.
His attorneys were successful in getting the order blocked in the Paris court by arguing that it would cause “disproportionate harm” to his “private and family life.”
Iquioussen “has for years promoted poisonous views that are nothing less than incitement to hatred, prejudice, and violence,” a lawyer for the interior ministry told the Council of State last week.
The preacher’s attorney responded that some of the comments, which included anti-Semitic or misogynistic speech, were made more than 20 years ago and that he had never been charged for making such words in public.
Iquioussen is a conservative, that much is true. He has made outdated claims about the status of women in society, according to Lucie Simon. “But that doesn’t really pose a threat to the peace,”
The official of the interior ministry stated that the imam “remains an anti-Semite” and that his statements “provide fertile ground for separatism and even terrorism.”
