Radical preacher in France’s ‘quiet Salafist’ town leads resistance to integration
▶ Colin Randall visits Ecquevilly, where France’s secularism faces a stern test from fundamentalists
Barely 30 kilometres from the renowned Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, France’s perpetual search for harmonious relations with its post-colonial Muslim population has its own reflection in the troubled recent history of one small town.
On first encounter, Ecquevilly – a community of just 4,200 people – seems just another part of the commuter belt west of Paris.
Smart detached houses, some flying French tricolours, are just a few paces from drab-but-functional blocks of low-cost apartments.
Ecquevilly’s diverse population evokes France’s multicultural World Cup-winning team. But not everyone embraces the idea that a sporting triumph that draws on all ethnic strands can truly accelerate integration and inspire what the French call “vivre ensemble”, living together in mutual respect.
A minority of French Muslims wish to lead lives divorced from secular western society. This desire became so pronounced in Ecquevilly, under the influence of a charismatic preacher who was born and grew up there, that two reporters from the Catholic daily newspaper, La Croix, recently spent three weeks there observing everyday life.
Their powerful report, its title translating as “Salafism in daily life”, stretched to several pages and had a profound effect on residents, officials and community leaders.
Until the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, Ecquevilly had a thriving mosque on the ground floor beneath a kindergarten near the imposing town hall.
People travelled from as far away as Belgium for Friday prayers, drawn by the persuasive imam Youssef Bounouader, who had limited Islamic scholarship but restyled himself Abou Anas after visits to Yemen and Syria and adopted a strict interpretation of Islam.
Music, dancing and television were discouraged, as was contact with Christians and Jews.
A year after the ISIS murders that left 130 dead across the capital on November 13 2015, growing concern about the mosque led the French authorities to use emergency powers to force its closure.
A long police investigation prompted Serge Morvan, the prefect for the Yvelines department, in which Ecquevilly is located, to justify the decision by citing the mosque leadership’s backing for “discrimination and hatred, even violence”.
This was disputed. “Abou Anas was careful not to cross the line between radical and illegal preaching,” a selfidentified moderate Muslim who knew him from childhood told The National. “He was always on the borderline.”
The imam, who continues to preach online, condemned the Paris attacks and subsequent ISIS atrocities, including the suicide bombing at a pop concert in Manchester in May last year.
But many found his sermons and his rigid views disturbing. “In his eyes, I am kafir – an infidel – because I wear western clothes and not traditional robes,” said a practising Muslim with North African roots.
Many residents of the housing blocks, which are clean but soulless and devoid of shops or cafes, deferred to Mr Bounouader on how Muslims should live and dress.
He surrounded himself with highly motivated young supporters. Enough people complied to make it seem as if a part of this small town had cut itself off from mainstream France, without seeing the inconsistency of simultaneously accepting social benefits and public services.
Local officials say the problem is restricted to the Parc area of the town, which accounts for about 20 per cent of inhabitants. Not all were enthusiastic about Abou Anas’s backing for “quiet Salafism”, a form of strict religious practice that avoids politics or calls to violence but – in the words of one Muslim – “they followed like sheep”.
A senior local politician who initially talked freely to The
National but then asked not to be identified, described a common Salafist strategy to buy or rent flats or houses located beside each other, “gradually building a sort of village of their own”.
“At the heart of the Salafist tendency are maybe 20 households,” one local said. “That’s the inner circle but then there is one larger outer ring of maybe 40 more and another, bigger still, of sympathisers.”
As a result, Ecquevilly’s Muslims have had to do without a mosque of their own. A replacement planned before the closure of the old one is nearing completion after work costing €700,000 (Dh2.9 million) donated by Muslims around France. But Muslim moderates say it cannot open without a leadership detached from Abou Anas’s supporters.
“So far that is proving difficult,” said Abdelaziz El Jaouhari, general secretary of Muslim institutions in the region and president of a mosque in neighbouring Mantes.
He believes Abou Anas used subtle methods rather than insults or intimidation to sway people. As the prominent figure in a group of Muslim men with similar clothing and attitudes, he convinced others his was the right path.
“I do not condemn Salafism,” Mr El Jaouhari said. “There are several schools of Islam and each Muslim must make a personal choice. But to force that choice on others is wrong.”
His view echoed arguments used by Vincent Brengarth, a French lawyer who unsuccessfully challenged the mosque closure. He told the country’s supreme appeal court, the Council of State: “We do not see that the fight against terrorism should gag all forms of Islam just because they do not meet all the canons of a republican Islam.”
At a public meeting in Ecquevilly in May, one audience member said the authorities’ attitude towards local Muslims amounted to collective punishment, depriving them of the mosque and, as a result, stigmatising them for events they had nothing to do with.
“Yet no one went from here to wage jihad [in Iraq or Syria],” he said. The contrast with another small French town is striking in this respect – dozens of young men from Lunel, in the south, ended up fighting and, in several cases, dying in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts.
One beacon of hope in Ecquevilly’s divided community is Mosaique, an association where mixed groups of young people come together for a range of cultural and sporting activities. Young members of French, North African and sub-Saharan African backgrounds took part in a recent sponsored cycle that covered 400km and raised €7,000 (Dh29,150) for a cancer charity.
“Our mission is simple,” said Mosaique’s director, Idriss Amazouz, 47, the son of an Algerian immigrant. “We encourage young people to act for themselves.” The beaming young faces preparing for a Halloween show spoke volumes for Mosaique’s success.
Bruno Millienne, MP for Yvelines and vice-president of the parliamentary MoDem group allied to President Emmanuel Macron, said Mosaique’s work was vital in building links between people of different ethnic roots.
“It is by learning to rediscover each other in respect of our cultural differences that we will get there. It’s a difficult task and will take time but deserves the effort.”
He said Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood doctrines exist everywhere in France.
“Their followers are currently more discreet but, at the slightest untoward event, they reappear as quickly as they have been hiding.”
A recent book by a conservative novelist and teacher, Christian de Moliner, made the alarmist claim that just by giving semi-autonomous status to the “30 per cent of Muslims who believe sharia should prevail over French law” would the country avoid civil war.
His arguments attracted widespread condemnation.
But Mr Millienne acknowledged that France “can’t avoid parallel societies” as “they have always existed” and always will. “On the other hand, we can considerably limit their influence through education and culture,” he said.
Distanced from the influence of Abou Anas, but amid concern that he and his disciples dearly wish to control the new mosque once it opens, Ecquevilly strikes visitors as calm if curiously quiet.
There are signs of an improved atmosphere. But no one says Abou Anas will not resurface. He still has followers, and is seen visiting his mother, although he shuns the media.
“It’s as if you have cut off the snake’s head,” said one of few Muslims willing to speak, “but the body still moves.”