Aulnay's Imams Didn't Just Quote the Quran. They Curated It.

The ISIS mosque, season two

The story begins next door, in Sevran, where a clandestine prayer hall nicknamed, for clarity's sake, the "ISIS mosque" was walled up in 2016: about a dozen of its worshippers had left for Iraq and Syria, and many are now believed missing or dead, some in suicide bombings. At the network's trial in 2020, one former leader admitted only that hatred of Shiites had been preached there. Some regulars then moved to a modest prayer hall in Aulnay-sous-Bois, wedged between a hammam and an evangelical church. A decade later, it draws about 300 worshippers, as Sevran did. The proselytising, Le Figaro notes, has hardly been a runaway success.

In 2020, the association running it hired two imams, active online and openly Salafist. One of them soon explained on YouTube that Muslims are not made to live among the kuffar, the unbelievers. A bold stance for a man preaching between a hammam and a church.

Everyone makes the list

The closure order signed by the prefect on July 27 reads like a catalogue. In January 2025, one imam justified the killing of the man who had burned Qurans in Sweden, shot dead while streaming live on TikTok.

"No challenge to the Quran goes unpunished."— One of the Aulnay imams, in a video cited by the prefecture

The rest of the repertoire, according to the prefecture: martyrdom glorified and revenge against Israel urged, the October 7 attacks justified, nonbelievers described as animals doomed to hell, Jews targeted in several sermons broadcast on YouTube, and Shiites ranked below pigs and dogs on the purity scale, in keeping with the Sevran tradition. The mosque also twice hosted a Kuwaiti Salafist preacher, since banned from France, who urged the killing, in Aulnay itself, of Muslims straying from authentic belief. A guest lecturer advised believers, in a video posted on X, to hit their children aged 11 and over who skip prayers. Among the regulars were people convicted of terrorism. Jews, Shiites, nonbelievers, lax Muslims, Quran burners, children who skip prayers: in Aulnay, everyone eventually made the list.

Context, sold separately

The mosque's lawyer, Rafik Chekkat, denounced a serious violation of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, property rights and, boldly, secularism, built on vague evidence and misreadings of the Quran.

"Can an imam still quote the Quran in the mosque where he preaches?"— Rafik Chekkat, the mosque's lawyer, quoted by ThePrint

The prefect, Julien Charles, called the idea ridiculous: the imams, he argued, picked the most virulent passages and served them without any religious or historical context. A defence of the holy book that contains a small admission: it has virulent passages to pick from. On August 7, the Montreuil administrative court upheld the closure, finding no serious and manifestly illegal infringement of freedom of worship or expression, and stressing that it bans no one from quoting the Quran. It was unmoved by the association's corrective measures: the two imams behind 90 percent of the allegations had been removed on July 3, just after the prefect's letter announcing the closure. Yet one of them had had his assets frozen for incitement to terrorism back in June 2025, without the association reacting. A conversion to moderation with a remarkably precise date.

Back to 1940

Online, critics of the closure reached for history: just like in 1940, one wrote, Muslims had replaced the Jews, with the prefect under Zionist control. A daring comparison in defence of a mosque whose sermons had targeted Jews. Another post fitted Zionism, Freemasonry and Nazism into a single sentence. The prefect filed a complaint and the first account was suspended.

Dissolved, and appealed

On September 16, at the request of Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, the Council of Ministers dissolved the association, whose assets had been frozen since July. Its lawyer, who says he understands why the Montreuil judge did not want to contradict the prefect, is counting on the Conseil d'État, France's highest administrative court, to be "a little more legal and a little less political". An odd charge against a ruling that quoted the preachers at length. With the 2027 presidential campaign under way, the government, which also banned the annual gathering of Muslims of the West in Nantes in May, stands accused by the left of Islamophobia and by the right of laxity. Azzedine Gaci, rector of the Villeurbanne mosque, warns that labels disconnected from the reality on the ground can install a damaging climate.

"A permanent logic of suspicion, surveillance and pressure."— Azzedine Gaci, in TSA (translated)

His remedy: judge each mosque on documented facts. In Aulnay, the prefect did exactly that, video by video. France did not close a mosque for quoting the Quran. It closed one for what its preachers chose to do with it.