The French authorities have deported Mohamed Tataiat, an Algerian national serving as an imam in Toulouse, for allegedly inciting “violence and racial hatred” against Jews.
The announcement was made on X on Saturday, April 20, by French Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin.
“Once again, the immigration law allows us to expel to his country of origin, in less than 24 hours, an “imam” from Toulouse, a preacher of hatred and convicted by the courts. The protection of France and the French is my priority,” Dermanin wrote in a post.
French media reports indicate that the deportation occurred on Friday evening, April 19.
Jean Iglesias, Tataiat’s lawyer, criticized the military expulsion of him, arguing it was not an emergency and he had been in France for 40 years, AFP reported.
A hearing was supposed to be held on, Monday, April 22, to consider an urgent petition from the imam’s lawyer regarding this deportation decision in the administrative court in Paris, according to what the lawyer revealed.
Sixty-one-year-old Tataiat arrived in France in 1985 as a seconded Algerian imam. He moved to Toulouse two years later to work in the mosque in the Empalot district.
In June 2018, a local official in the Haute-Garonne region claimed that a sermon by Tatiat at Al Nour Mosque on December 15, 2017, constituted “incitement to hatred and discrimination against Jews.”
The sermon delivered by Tataiat quoted a hadith, or saying, of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), which proclaims, “The day of judgement will come only when the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind the tree and the stone, and the tree and the stone will say, ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of God, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him, except Algharqada, which is one of the trees of the Jews.’”
On August 31, 2022, the Toulouse Court of Appeal sentenced Tataiat to four months in prison with a suspended sentence.
On December 19, the Court of Cassation rejected the imam’s appeal, concluding his conviction, and on April 5, the French Minister of the Interior signed a decision to expel him.
It is noteworthy that France decided to stop importing imams from other countries, effective from January 1, 2024.
