French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner has announced that in 2019 the French government closed down two radical mosques and placed another 63 under surveillance.
The two radical mosques closed last year were done so under the powers granted to the Interior Ministry by the SILT anti-terrorism laws that were enacted in October 2017 to replace the prior state of emergency.
Castaner added that there have been a total of “31 terrorist attacks since January 1, 2017” and noted that “30 places of worship are subject to closure measures and 7 procedures are underway”. He claimed that health and safety provisions were also being used in certain cases, LCI reports.
Individual administrative control measures (Micas), which replace house arrests, were also up significantly in 2019 by 84 per cent, for a total of 134 cases.
Most of the cases were focused in the Ille-de-France region where Paris and the no-go multicultural suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis are located.
The four pillars of the SILT anti-terrorism laws — closure of mosques and places of worship, Micas, home visits by authorities, and establishing security perimeters — are being tested by French authorities until the end of this year.
Following the end of the year, the measures will be evaluated as to their efficacy and it will be decided whether the government will extend or modify them.
The closures come just months after French Secretary of State for the Interior, Laurent Nuñez, announced that the government had shut down 30 drinking establishments, 12 places of worship, three schools, and nine associations linked to radical Islam.
Despite the closures, a leaked report from the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI), France’s internal security agency, claimed that as many as 150 neighbourhoods across the country were “held” by Muslim radicals.
The report also noted that in some communities, such as the commune of Maubeuge in the north of the country, Islamist political parties like the Union of French Muslim Democrats (UDMF) saw huge local support.
Some have expressed concern over the rise of the UDMF ahead of the French municipal elections set to take place next month.