A Tunisian imam who was banished from France due to alleged hate speech declared on Friday that he will challenge the ruling in court.
Frenchman Mahjoub Mahjoubi, who hails from the southern village of Bagnols-sur-Ceze, criticized his dismissal as “arbitrary.” The 52-year-old was taken into custody and subsequently deported to Tunisia on Thursday. He took a plane from Paris and landed there just before midnight.
Having moved to France in the 1980s, Mahjoubi is a married mother of five kids. His children are all French nationals, but he is not, and French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin revoked his residency status on Sunday. As per the official order for Mahjoubi’s expulsion, which was obtained by AFP, during his sermons in February, he presented a violent and intolerant image of Islam, which could lead to discrimination against women, behavior against French values, tensions with the Jewish community, and radicalization of jihadists.
Mahjoubi called for “the downfall of Western society,” and the order said that the imam also referred to “the Jewish people as the enemy.”
Additionally, the imam was charged with spreading a video in which he referred to the “tricolour” as “satanic” and said it had “no value with Allah,” without making it clear if he was talking to the French flag. In self-defense, Mahjoubi said that it had been a “slip of the tongue” and that he had been alluding to rivalry between football fans from several Maghrebi countries during the most recent African Cup of Nations.
At his in-laws’ home in Soliman, 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Tunis, the imam declared to AFP, “I will strive to return to France where I have lived for 40 years.” Mahjoubi, a construction company owner, said that he was the only provider for his family, which included his youngest child who is receiving cancer treatment in the hospital. “My lawyer is going to take legal action in France if the court does not give me justice,” he went on. The European Court of Human Rights will hear my appeal after that.
“I did not disparage the Jewish community or the French flag,” he declared. Darmanin said on social media on Thursday that the removal served as a “demonstration” of how a newly passed immigration legislation “makes France stronger.” The government’s reaction to the far-right’s increase in French opinion surveys was perceived as include the law that tightened immigration regulations.
Darmanin criticized a “radical imam who made improper words,” saying “Firmness is the rule.” Mahjoubi claimed that Darmanin was exploiting his case to “raise a noise about the immigration law” and criticized the expulsion as being based on “an arbitrary judgment.”