On July 27, French authorities ordered the closure of a mosque in the Paris region for six months. The reason cited was sermons and social media posts by the mosque’s imams which, according to officials, glorified terrorism, justified jihad, and incited violence, hatred and discrimination.

This was reported by EWTN News.

The order concerned the “Chanteloup” mosque in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a northeastern suburb of the capital located in the Seine-Saint-Denis department. The announcement was made by the local prefecture, the French regional government authority.

The closure was ordered under a provision that came into force in October 2017. It allows prefects to close places of worship if it is found that sermons there “incite violence or hatred, promote terrorism or provoke terrorist acts.”

A statement from the local prefect said that both the mosque’s regular imams and guest preachers had disseminated a “radical Islamist ideology” that “echoes the rhetoric of terrorist organizations, justifies jihad and glorifies martyrdom.” The administration added that the closure was justified given the seriousness and systematic nature of the statements, which authorities assessed as “capable of provoking terrorist acts.”

Another mosque in the same department, in the city of Pantin, was closed for six months in 2020 for publicly criticizing history teacher Samuel Paty. Paty was beheaded that same year after showing his students cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Since 2017, French authorities have ordered the closure of seven places of worship under the same legal provision, with all seven closures occurring within the first two years after the provision took effect. This was preceded by the closure of 19 mosques and prayer rooms during the state of emergency from 2015 to 2017, which was introduced following the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. A new wave of closures followed the adoption in 2021 of a law aimed at combating Islamist “separatism.”

The closure was ordered amid an ongoing and highly contentious public debate over the spread of Islam in France. According to the government, in 2024 the total number of Muslim places of worship in the country, including both full-fledged mosques and small prayer rooms, stood at around 2,600, compared with just eight in 1975.

According to studies, Muslims account for approximately 10% of the country’s population in European France, or 6 to 7 million people.