{"id":2600,"date":"2012-09-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polaco\/france-based-tunisian-imam-hassen-chalghoumi-we-european-muslims-are-hostages-caught-between-extremism-and-racism\/2600"},"modified":"2012-09-17T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-17T00:00:00","slug":"france-based-tunisian-imam-hassen-chalghoumi-we-european-muslims-are-hostages-caught-between-extremism-and-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polish\/france-based-tunisian-imam-hassen-chalghoumi-we-european-muslims-are-hostages-caught-between-extremism-and-racism\/2600","title":{"rendered":"France-Based Tunisian Imam Hassen Chalghoumi: 'We European Muslims Are Hostages, Caught Between Extremism And Racism&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- Document Body --><br \/>\n<DIV ALIGN=\"justify\" CLASS=\"bodytext\"><br \/>\n<DIV id=\"sub_bodytext\" class=\"sub_bodytext\"><DIV><br \/>\n<P><I>Following are excerpts from an address delivered by France-based Tunisian Imam Hassen Chalghoumi, which was posted on the Internet on March 22, 2012.<\/I><br \/>\n<P><I><A href=\"http:\/\/www.memritv.org\/clip\/en\/0\/0\/0\/0\/0\/0\/3561.htm\">Click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV.<\/A> <\/I><br \/>\n<P><IFRAME height=\"485\" src=\"http:\/\/www.memritv.org\/player\/largePlayer.php?&#038;width=585&#038;height=485&#038;autoplay=0&#038;clipid=3561\" frameBorder=\"0\" width=\"585\" allowTransparency scrolling=\"no\"><\/IFRAME><\/I><\/I><br \/>\n<P><B>Title<\/B>: &#8222;The Conference of Eastern Christians in Trouble, held at Neuilly-sur-Seine on Monday, March 22, 2012, by the Committee for the Defense of Religious Minorities&#8221;<\/DIV><br \/>\n<P><B>Mediator Robert Sol\u00e9<\/B>: &#8222;We know you to be a defender of the [French] Republic and its laws. What can be done so that the tolerant Islam that you represent becomes a reality not only in France, but in the Middle East, and possibly in the Maghreb?&#8221;<br \/>\n<P><B>Hassen Chalghoumi<\/B>: &#8222;For years we have been denouncing radical islam and calling to be careful. Just last night, there was a demonstration of 3,00 or 4,000 Salafists in Tunisia, calling for the death of the Jews. This deviant [Salafist] minority can be divided into three groups.<br \/>\n<P>&#8222;One is the Jihadist Salafists, to which Mohamed Merah belonged, and another is the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt is being tormented by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a huge and disastrous ideology.<br \/>\n<P>[&#8230;]<br \/>\n<P>&#8222;We European Muslims are hostages, caught between extremism and racism.<br \/>\n<P>[&#8230;]<br \/>\n<P>&#8222;The West does not help Sufi Islam.<br \/>\n<P>[&#8230;]<br \/>\n<P>&#8222;The [Salafists] were in Europe as political refugees. They returned to Tunisia and took the reins of power there. There are more than 27,000 Salafists in Tunisia. Weapons come in. Liberated from a dictator, and brought back to the diabolical Salafists, and the women, to begin with&#8230;<br \/>\n<P>&#8222;The first martyr after the revolution in Tunisia was a priest from a church in La Goulette. He was assassinated.<br \/>\n<P>[&#8230;]<br \/>\n<P>&#8222;I praise the courage of the French president and the minister of the interior for banning [the entry] of the infamous Al-Qaradhawi, along with other extremists.<br \/>\n<P>&#8222;Let me tell you something. According to Tunisian intelligence, 7,000 French Salafists went to Tunisia. Imagine that.<br \/>\n<P>&#8222;Current Islamist ministers in Tunisia were in France. Our main task \u2013 although it&#8217;s a bit difficult to say this \u2013 is to begin doing something here [in France]. A police source told me that today; there are at least 5,000 women who wear full veils in Tunisia. In the days of dictator Ben Ali, there was not a single one.<br \/>\n<P>&#8222;On January 25 this year, I was at the synagogue in Tunis, along with 40 imams of different origins: from Senegal, Mali, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. The Jewish community in Tunis was terrified. They said that it was the first time since the revolution that non-Jews had entered the synagogue. We, as imams, were in peril [because of our visit] there. This was not easy for us. Fortunately, we had police protection.<br \/>\n<P>&#8222;This [threat] is due to people like Al-Qaradhawi, to a channel like Al-Jazeera TV, and to a policy like that of Qatar.&#8221;<br \/>\n<P>[&#8230;]<br \/>\n<P><IMG border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.memri.org\/image\/13250.jpg\" width=\"369\" height=\"270\"><br \/>\n<P><IMG style=\"WIDTH: 364px; HEIGHT: 260px\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.memri.org\/image\/13251.jpg\" width=\"397\" height=\"277\"><br \/>\n<P><IMG style=\"WIDTH: 359px; HEIGHT: 269px\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.memri.org\/image\/13252.jpg\" width=\"397\" height=\"352\"><\/DIV><br \/>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following are excerpts from an address delivered by France-based Tunisian Imam Hassen Chalghoumi, which was posted on the Internet on March 22, 2012. Click here to view this clip on MEMRI TV. Title: &#8222;The Conference of Eastern Christians in Trouble, held at Neuilly-sur-Seine on Monday, March 22, 2012, by the Committee for the Defense of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[824,835],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-specjalne-komunikaty","category-archiwum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.memri.org\/polish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}