France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday that influential and popular Egyptian preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi was “not welcome” in France.
Sarkozy was speaking four days after an Islamist gunman who admitted to killing 7 people in southwest France was shot dead in a gunfight with police. Mohamed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, claimed to have received terrorism training in Pakistan.
Al-Qaradawi, a well-known Sunni Muslim cleric with links to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, had been invited to a meeting of the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF) next month. [Bikya Masr] Read more
