“I don’t understand this smear campaign,” said Isabelle Surply, a councillor (formerly RN) in Saint-Chamond (Loire), in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper published on Friday April 8. More than a month after she denounced the radical sermons of an imam in a mosque in the town, she continues to be the subject of a defamation complaint by the Conseil départemental du culte musulman and the target of threats. Following this complaint, she had been summoned to a voluntary hearing on March 4. “It seemed clear to me that the criminal file was blank and that after this interview there was a possibility that the case would be dropped,” she explains. This was nevertheless summoned before the investigating judge, who “considered” her indictment.
“I have only denounced dangerous sermons which the Minister of the Interior himself has described as unacceptable,” she outraged to the newspaper Le Figaro. Imam Mmadi Ahamada had said in his sermons, among other things, “You Muslim women, try to obey the finger of your husbands, stay in your homes and do not display yourselves in the manner of women in the times before Islam”. He was suspended. As he is a Comorian citizen and holds a residence permit as a “visitor”, he had been obliged to leave French territory (OQTF). However, this decision was overturned by the administrative court, which considered the reason of “threat to public order” to be unfounded. He was also able to carry out his preaching again.
Isabelle Surply claims that she got “hundreds of messages threatening her with death, rape and beheading”. She filed several complaints, but they were ” fruitless “. The police gave her a “direct contact number” on Friday April 8 to warn her of an imminent threat. On April 15, she will be questioned by the judge in connection with the defamation case.