France Shutdowns A Mosque In Paris For Incitement Against Teacher Who Was Brutally Beheaded By Islamist

French authorities have announced that they will be shutting down a Paris mosque that condemned teacher Samuel Paty who was beheaded by an Islamist, AFP reported.

On October 9, the Pantin mosque in a densely populated Parisian suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis posted a video on its Facebook page denouncing Paty for showing pupils caricatures of the Mohammed, saying the teacher had spread a message of “hate” by doing so. The mosque deleted the post a few hours after the murder.

Paty, who had shown the caricatures of Mohammed as part of a lesson on freedom of expression after giving Muslim pupils the choice to leave the class, was brutally beheaded outside his school on Friday by an 18-year-old Chechen Islamist.

A photo of the teacher and a message confessing to his murder was found on the mobile phone of his killer, 18-year-old Chechen-Abdullakh-Anzorov.

The father of a girl student in Paty’s class who posted the video shared by the Pantin mosque is among 15 people arrested after the killing, along with a known Islamist radical and four members of Anzorov family. The father is said to have issue a fatwa against Paty.

The head of the mosque, M’hammed Henniche, said he regretted the decision to share the clip, but insisted that the video was not a call for violence.

The interior ministry said the mosque in Pantin, which has some 1,500 worshippers, would be shut on Wednesday for a period of 6 months.

“I asked the prefect of Seine-Saint-Denis to close the mosque of Pantin since its leader relayed the message saying that the teacher should be intimidated and published the school’s address.” French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin informed a local television channel.

Earlier this week, Darmanin announced that France will carry out the expulsion of 231 radicalized foreign nationals in response to the killing of Paty.