In France, an imam has been jailed for 18 months for publicly supporting terrorism. The Pakistani Imam Luqman Haider posted three videos on Tiktok in September, calling for the killing of “unbelieving French”. Shortly afterwards, a Pakistani stabbed two people in Paris. The imam then called the perpetrator “a brave man” in one of his videos.
Haider’s lawyer Xavier Nogueras had doubts about the charges beforehand. “To convict someone for supporting terrorism, there must also be an ideological affiliation. There is none here. My client published those videos just to buzz to create. He wanted more followers on TikTok. ”
Border controls
The lawsuit comes as President Macron takes a series of measures against extremism and terrorism. There was already one before that bill in preparation. But Macron decided to speed things up after France was hit by three new terror attacks in recent months. After the stabbing by the Pakistani, teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by a Chechen and three people were murdered by a Tunisian in a church in Nice.
For Macron, the series of attacks was one reason to focus his arrows on migration. “Part of the terrorism can be explained by immigration,” he said in an exclusive interview with the newspaper Le Figaro. The president has expanded border controls and wants to revise the Schengen Treaty, which regulates the free movement of people within much of the EU. In its own country, the French government focuses mainly on radical organizations, radical imams and radical mosques.
Earlier this week, the French Council of State passed the government the green light to close a mosque and ban an Islamic aid organization. The organization BarakaCity, like imam Luqman Haider, is said to “spread messages of hatred and violence” on the internet. Pantin’s mosque, on the outskirts of Paris, was closed for publishing a video shortly before the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty. In that video, the father of one of Paty’s pupils criticizes his initiative to show cartoons of Mohammed in the classroom.
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