France Wants to Stop Turkish Islamist Group From Receiving Local Subsidy For Mosque Construction

British media is report­ing that the French gov­ern­ment is try­ing to stop a Turk­ish Islamist group from receiv­ing a local gov­ern­ment sub­sidy in con­nec­tion with the con­struc­tion of a “grand mosque” in Stras­bourg. Accord­ing to The Times’ report: 

March 25, 2021 The French gov­ern­ment has accused Strasbourg’s city coun­cil of assist­ing “inter­fer­ence” from Turkey by agree­ing to sub­sidise a grand mosque being built by a dias­po­ra group. Gérald Dar­manin, the inte­ri­or min­is­ter, has ordered the state pre­fect to oppose a €2.5 mil­lion sub­sidy approved by the city’s may­or, claim­ing that the Eyub Sul­tan mosque is part of Pres­i­dent Erdogan’s dri­ve to expand his brand of polit­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed Islam. […]

It is being built by the Mil­li Gorus Islam­ic Con­fed­er­a­tion, a pan-Euro­pean move­ment for the Turk­ish dias­po­ra. The organ­i­sa­tion, which has close ties to the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment, has fall­en foul of Macron’s cam­paign to curb the preach­ing of rad­i­cal Mus­lim doc­trines and halt the for­eign financ­ing of mosques and schools. It was among three of the nine branch­es of the French Islam Coun­cil that refused to sign a char­ter pro­mot­ed by the gov­ern­ment last January.

Read the rest here (pay­wall).

The Islam­ic Con­fed­er­a­tion Mil­li Görus (Con­fédéra­tion Islamique du Mil­lî Görüs en France; CIMG) is the French branch of Mil­lî Görüş, a Turk­ish Islamist move­ment found­ed by Necmet­tin Erbakan, Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Erdoğan’s polit­i­cal men­tor.  Mil­lî Görüş has called for an end to the sec­u­lar regime in Turkey. The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) has report­ed on Ger­man gov­ern­ment asser­tions that Erdoğan’s AKP par­ty has inten­si­fied its rela­tions with Mil­lî Görüş in Ger­many as well as about CIMG’s rejec­tion of the char­ter iden­ti­fied above. Oth­er  rel­e­vant GIOR report­ing has included:

• This week, we report­ed that the Ger­man branch of Mil­lî Görüş sold a book call­ing for death to those who insult the Prophet Mohammed and approv­ing “light beat­ing” for women at its book­store before pulling the book from its shelves.

• In Decem­ber 2020, we report­ed on Mil­lî Görüş coop­er­at­ing with DITIB, the French branch of the Turk­ish Direc­torate of Reli­gious Affairs, in France.

• In Novem­ber 2020, we pub­lished an analy­sis about the French Coun­cil of Mus­lim Wor­ship (CFCM), which wrote the char­ter that CIMG rejected.