Yesterday, Friday June 28, Hafiz Chems-eddine, the rector of the Paris mosque, posted on the monument’s website a call to vote against the National Rally. I am addressing all my fellow citizens: for the love of France and its ideals, GO VOTE. Say NO to hate “, he wrote. On X, Internet users react to this statement which many find unwelcome.
A position that the rector has renewed several times in recent weeks, during the European elections as well as during these early legislative elections. Let us not allow the demons of irrational hatred to divide us. As rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, a place of rescue for many Jews during World War II, I speak to my fellow Jews, my friends, my neighbors and beyond: the enemy is not the Muslim. Islam is not your enemy. », Expanded the rector, declaring that Muslim empires have always welcomed Jews throughout time.
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Bringing Jews and Muslims together
« The future of France must not be played out in the Middle East “, he wrote, ” This France, which has united us under its emblem, deserves that we place its interests above our differences. […] Let’s not deliver [les valeurs de la République] to these obscure designs. »
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He called on voters to “ to be outraged in the name of what the Jewish people endured under a Europe governed by the ultra-nationalist far right in the last century “, and denounced the essentialization that, according to him, both Jews and Muslims are victims of. Regarding the latter, he declared: ” In our diversity, we recognize only one community: the national community with all the complexity and richness that this identity entails. »
