Hate Chalghoumi

Hassen Chalghoumi (* 1972 in Tunis ) is a French imam of Tunisian origin who heads the mosque in Drancy . He is considered the best-known imam in France and gained international fame as a Muslim advocate of a burqa ban .

Chalghoumi studied in Tunisia at the Ez-Zitouna University, and later at Koran schools in Syria and Pakistan . He came to France at the end of 1996, is married to a French woman of Tunisian origin and has been a French citizen since 2000 .

Cultural and social position

Chalghoumi has long been considered a promoter of an interreligious dialogue between Islam , Christianity and Judaism . For this purpose he founded the “Conférence des Imams” and works closely with Jewish community leaders. In his mosque, he often called for peaceful coexistence instead of religious hatred. In 2006 he took part in a memorial event for the victims of the Holocaust in the Drancy assembly camp and called on Muslims to respect the memory of the Jewish deportees. In the wake of the tensions caused by the Gaza war , his attempts at reconciliation provoked violent reactions from radical Muslims, Chalghoumi was referred to as a "Jewish imam". He received death threats and was placed under police protection.

Chalghoumi publicly advocated a total ban on the burqa in public spaces. In his view, the burqa is a symbol of inequality and extremism without justification by Islam. Elsewhere he described it as a "prison for women, a tool for sexist oppression and Islamist indoctrination ".

Reactions to terrorist attacks

After the rampage in Toulouse in March 2012, in which three Jewish schoolchildren and a rabbi were killed, Chalghoumi led a solidarity march by Muslim clerics together with the French chief rabbi. As a result, Chalghoumi was invited to Israel, where he also visited the Yad Vashem memorial . With the Israeli embassy in Paris, he has since organized study trips for French imams to Israel and Israeli imams to France in order to promote cultural exchange.

After the attack on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, Chalghoumi strongly condemned the attack. The perpetrators had "sold their soul to hell". Your prophet is not the prophet of Islam: “What prophet are you talking about? Probably from your internet guru. We don't have the same prophet. Your prophet is one of hatred and horror. Your prophet is not that of French Islam ”.

At the initiative of Chalghoumis and the Jewish writer Marek Halter , an international group of 30 Muslim clergymen started a “March of Muslims against terrorism” across Europe at the beginning of July 2017. The “march” leads to places of Islamist terror until July 14th to pray for the victims and to underline the demand “not to leave Islam to barbarians and murderers”. The action is not supported by the French Islamic Council .