Current diplomatic tensions between Paris and Algiers are putting pressure on Chems-eddine Hafiz. The rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris finds himself in question around the halal certification system managed by his institution.
Thursday during his vows, the rector forcefully denounced “a scandalous and unfounded cabal” and “an unprecedented media campaign”. In question: a recent newspaper article L’Opinion accusing the Grand Mosque of Paris of having organized, with the support of the Algerian authorities, a monopolistic halal certification system for European products intended for Algeria. The system, which according to the daily is similar to “a compulsory tax”, would be very profitable with 5 million euros in turnover expected in 2024.
Chems-eddine Hafiz sees the hand of his adversaries in this
Since then, LR MEP François-Xavier Bellamy has alerted the European Commission and RN MP Matthias Renault has announced that he will contact the Paris prosecutor about a system which according to him “could amount to extortion”.
Arguments refuted by Chems-eddine Hafiz, who says he is transparent about this system run by a commercial company affiliated with the Great Mosque. “Everything had been made public” as soon as the agreements were signed with the Algerian authorities in December 2022, he assured during his vows. And “all dividends are used to finance the exercise of Muslim worship”. “Today, as luck would have it, everything is bad. There is a particular context between Algeria and France, and we see how my adversaries are attacking me,” he added on BFMTV.
A “double talk”
“The Great Mosque of Paris is the collateral victim of the deterioration of relations with Algiers,” believes Franck Frégosi, researcher at the CNRS and author of Governing Islam in France. Inaugurated in 1926, it has benefited from annual funding from the Algerian state of around 2 million euros since the beginning of the 1980s, and all its rectors were born in this country. Which earned him the recurring accusation – contested by Chems-eddine Hafiz – of “second Algerian embassy”.
-Franco-Algerian lawyer, Chems-eddine Hafiz has denounced Islamism several times, launched a literary prize, a reflection on “the adaptation of Muslim discourse in France” and recently called his 150 imams to an “invocation for France” to the end of Friday prayers. But other good experts are more critical: “Some think that the man is talking twice,” notes one of them, recalling for example that he had received Rima Hassan from LFI in May.
Our file on Algeria
Since the executive broke with the French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM), the rector of the Great Mosque has in fact become the privileged interlocutor of the public authorities. Underlying this is therefore the question of the representation of Islam in France.
