Lhe public authorities are not releasing pressure on the European Institute of Human Sciences (IESH) in Saint-Léger-de-Fougeret. The Nevers public prosecutor's office announced this Wednesday that a search had been carried out in this center, which trains imams and Muslim theologians.
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The investigation would relate to alleged acts of money laundering and breach of trust, as well as possible violations of the provisions of the August 2021 law “reinforcing the principles of the Republic”, on the declaration of foreign financing. The IESH would have discreetly received subsidies from Persian Gulf countries. “The search operation was successful,” said Nevers prosecutor Anne Lehaître.
ALSO READ The boar or the return of blasphemy in liberal democracies? Already this summer, the IESH had had some problems. Following inspections by youth and sports services, the prefect of Nièvre issued an order imposing the closure of its holiday camp from July 9. The institute appealed unsuccessfully.
Proven foreign financing
The fact that the IESH is financed by foreign interests is no secret. During a hearing before a Senate fact-finding mission in 2016, Larabi Becheri, its director, mentioned donations from “natural persons who may be foreign, particularly from Gulf countries”. Qatar was mentioned in several intelligence notes. The question would therefore not be whether this foreign financing exists, but whether the regulations governing it have been respected.
ALSO READ Does the European Union love the Muslim Brotherhood too much? Created in 1990 with the blessing of the French government of the time, the IESH is no longer at all in the odor of sanctity. The initial idea, validated by François Mitterrand (hence the choice of a location in Nièvre), was to Frenchify the training of imams and chaplains.
The authorities had chosen to turn to figures gravitating towards the Muslim Brotherhood movement, whose image, at the time, was not as bad as it is today. The Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF, now Muslims of France), was a leading interlocutor, the incarnation of modern Islam. The State quickly became disillusioned.
Another IESH in Saint-Denis
In 1994, Fayçal Mawlawi, figure of the Muslim Brotherhood in Lebanon, founding member and dean of the IESH, was banned from staying in France because of his links with terrorist organizations! In 1997, the fundamentalist theologian Youssef el-Qaradawi, ultra-radical, leading thinker of Brotherhood, was invited to the first graduation ceremony…
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Subsequently, the establishment assured on multiple occasions that it had distanced itself from Brotherhood, posing itself as a model of a republican institution, without entirely convincing. One of his religious studies teachers was banned from traveling during the Paris Olympic Games, in the name of preventing terrorist risks.
The IESH of Paris (in reality based in Saint-Denis), twin brother of that of Nièvre, was the subject of a temporary administrative closure in 2019. Among its former students, appears Inès Madani , sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempting to blow up a car near Notre-Dame de Paris in September 2016.
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