Top news

Imam who supports child brides 'should be denied visa'

A mosque in The Hague has been criticised for inviting a controversial Moroccan imam to a conference even though he has publicly endorsed the marriage of nine-year-old girls.

Politicians and Dutch-Moroccan women have spoken out against Mohamed al-Maghraoui, who is due to address a five-day gathering at the end of the month to celebrate the extension of the Salafist As-Sunnah mosque.

Labour Party (PvdA) MP Kadija Arib has called for the imam to be refused a visa to travel to the Netherlands, while Freedom Party (PVV) leader Geert Wilders took to Twitter to claim that the mosque should be closed down if Al-Maghraoui is given a platform.

Wilders was at the centre of a similar controversy in 2009 when he was banned from showing his film Fitna, in which he describes Islam as “totalitarian”, at the British House of Lords. He was eventually granted permission the following year.

A majority of Dutch Parliamentarians oppose Al-Maghraoui’s appearance in The Hague. PvdA member Ahmed Marcouch said the invitation was “incomprehensible”.

The imam’s views on child brides have sparked outrage in his native Morocco, where the legal age for marriage is 18.

In 200 he proclaimed a fatwa in 2008 in support of underage marriage, with the explanation: “I am a theologian. I don’t make these things up. It is the Prophet who has spoken before me.”

The fatwa was unanimously condemned by the High Council of Ulemas, Morocco’s pre-eminent religious authority.

A lawyer, Mourad el-Bekkori, has since filed a formal complaint against Al-Maghraoui for his “endorsement of paedophilia and rape”.

The leader of the As-Sunnah mosque, Fawaz Jneid, has regularly courted controversy, most notably in 2004 when he called for film-maker Theo van Gogh to be struck down with “an illness that cannot be healed by all the inhabitants of the earth”. Weeks later Van Gogh was shot dead on his bike by an Islamist fanatic.

Source: De Volkskrant: Kamerlid Arib: weiger imam die huwelijk met 9-jarige goedkeurt visum

Photo by Roel Wijnants