A Tunisian organisation has filed a legal complaint against French-Tunisian imam Hassen Chalghoumi and called for him to be stripped of his Tunisian citizenship following his recent visit to Israel in the midst of its genocidal onslaught on Gaza, reports Middle East Eye.
Chalghoumi, the imam of Drancy’s municipal mosque near Paris and chairman of Conference of Imams of France, led a delegation of Muslim scholars from Europe to Israel in a visit that claimed to “build bridges and promote inter-religious dialogue”.
The delegation of 15 imams and Muslim leaders from France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and visited sites connected to the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack, including Kibbutz Kfar Aza near the Gaza Strip.
The trip was organised by the European Leadership Network (Elnet), a pro-Israel group.
During the visit, Chalghoumi told the Israeli president that “the war that broke out after 7 October is not a war between Israel and Hamas or Israel and Hezbollah but a war between two worlds.
“You represent the world of humanity and democracy.”
In a video widely circulated on social media, the imam could also be seen attempting to kiss the hand of the Israeli interior minister, Moshe Arbel, who promptly removed his hand. The gesture and the overall visit sparked an outcry in Tunisia, a country that refuses any form of normalisation with Israel.
A local watchdog, the Tunisian Observatory for Transparency and Good Governance, announced in a statement over the weekend that it was filing a complaint against Chalghoumi for “high treason”.
“The actions of the Tunisian national, who led a group of European imams (on a visit to Israel) to express their solidarity and condemn the spirit of resistance are a disgrace and undermine the prestige of the Tunisian state,” the watchdog said in a statement.
“The explicit normalisation issued by this individual does not represent or honour the Tunisian people and state, in all its components, as his positions on the Palestinian cause are known to all. Chalghoumi’s statements constitute direct incitement against resistance to the occupying entity’s aggression […] and a call for blatant and public normalisation with the occupying entity,” it added.
The Observatory emphasised the need to initiate legal proceedings before military courts “against anyone involved in espionage activities with foreign countries or in normalisation with the Zionist entity”.
It also demanded that Chalghoumi be stripped of his Tunisian nationality.
The MEE report further said that the visit also sparked negative reactions elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Al-Azhar, the highest seat of learning in Sunni Islam, strongly condemned it as a “betrayal of religious and human values”. In a statement, the Cairo-based institution said the participants “falsely claimed their visit aimed to promote coexistence and interfaith dialogue, while blatantly ignoring the ongoing genocide, aggression and ongoing massacres against the Palestinian people for over 20 months”.
The European Council of Imams in Paris also issued a strong condemnation, calling the visit “suspicious” and asserting that it “does not represent the position of Muslims in Europe”.
Meanwhile, a mosque in the Dutch city of Alkmaar fired its imam after he participated in the trip.
The Bilal Mosque said that Imam Youssef Msibih was “immediately removed” from his position.
A media personality in France who has for years advocated “moderate Islam” and rapprochement between faiths, Chalghoumi is a controversial figure within the Muslim community, notably due to his commitment to normalisation with Israel.
On his social media account, Chalghoumi frequently posts against “Islamism” and warns about the alleged “infiltration and destabilising” goals of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe.
Last month, the imam sparked outrage after dancing at an event in Paris organised in support of Israel and Israeli captives.
During We Will Dance Again, an Israeli music festival that took place on June 22, Chalghoumi was spotted dancing on a stage surrounded by Israeli flags. The event was organised by The Truth, an association founded to challenge “disinformation, denigration of Israel, antisemitism, political Islam”, according to its social media accounts.
Chalghoumi’s participation in the festival amid Israel’s assault on Gaza and its attack on Iran caused heated reactions online, with users accusing the imam of “celebrating genocide”.
For French political scientist François Burgat, a renowned specialist on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and political Islam, the “fabrication” of Imam Chalghoumi as a “character” is “a persistent deception” that undermines the “representation of Muslims in France”. “The character of Imam Chalghoumi is the expression of the continuity of colonial practices in contemporary France. “Chalghoumi appears, in fact, as the direct descendant, the exact reproduction of these false Muslim elites fabricated from scratch in Algeria by the colonial authorities to pervert the representation of dominated populations,” Burgat wrote.
“In Chalghoumi’s case, however, it was not the French authorities who directly initiated this gross manipulation, but rather Franco-Israeli Zionist circles who, with the obvious consent of [the authorities], literally fabricated his character, placing him at the head of an ‘Association of Imams of France’ created especially for him,” the academic added. “This persistent deception thus represents one of the most serious attacks on the mechanisms for representing Muslims in France.”
