French Muslims Condemn Extremism
Dalil Boubakeur, President of the French Council of Muslim Faith, held a gathering outside the Paris Mosque, where he is the rector.
“We, Muslims of France, are shocked by the murder of innocents; we are horrified by this barbarism, by this terrorism,” Boubakeur told a crowd of several thousand gathered after Friday prayers before a minute of silence. “With such blind barbarity, how can they talk of Islam,” He was flanked by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo and a Catholic monseigneur, Bloomberg reported.
Similar events to condemn the ISIL terrorist group were held at mosques in Lyon, Nantes, and Bordeaux.
“These people don’t understand the religion,” Abdelkerim Janah, the imam of Nantes told the crowd.
Hassen Chalghoumi, the imam of Drancy, a Paris suburb with a large immigrant population, has called for a rally on Sept. 28 at Paris’s Place de la Republique.
“It is crucial that the Muslims of France and Europe come out and condemn this barbarity,” Chalghoumi said in an interview on France Info radio. “It is a duty.”
French President Francois Hollande on Sept. 24 confirmed that an ISIL-linked Algerian militant group had killed Herve Gourdel, a mountain guide they had seized three days earlier east of Algiers and threatened to kill if France didn’t cease bombing raids against ISIL in Iraq.
