Europe tries to douse firebrands

Mosques are under increasing surveillance. Picture / Reuters

PARIS - Countries across Western Europe are toughening their stance against firebrand preachers suspected of subverting vulnerable young Muslim men to the path of Islamist terrorism.

Imams have been under scrutiny in Europe since the September 11 attacks.

But surveillance and the threat of expulsion have in many countries become acute since the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamist last November and, especially, the July 7 terror attacks in London.

In Britain, where there are about 1.8 million Muslims, Home Secretary Charles Clarke is seeking powers to deport or exclude an individual "for example [for] preaching, running websites or writing articles which are intended to foment or provoke terrorism."

Britain is also seeking agreements with Middle East countries to return foreign imams suspected of stirring trouble.

France, home to about 5 million Muslims, has stepped up surveillance of radical mosques, kicked out two Algerian imams suspected of preaching violence, threatened 10 more with expulsion by the end of this month and its Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, has warned of stripping naturalised imams of their French nationality.

Italy on Tuesday arrested eight Palestinian fundamentalist preachers found to be in the country and put them on the fast-track to expulsion.

The Netherlands has expelled three imams from Bosnia, Egypt and Kenya suspected of using their mosque in Eindhoven for a jihad recruitment drive, and passed a law requiring new imams who arrive in the country to undergo a one-year course in the Dutch language, the rights of women, gay marriage and euthanasia.

In Belgium, the Interior Ministry has set up an information-gathering network on radical Islam, with 58 anti-terrorist experts reinforcing police in the main cities.

Austria, where 5 per cent of the population is Muslim, has empowered authorities to kick out imams whose sermons are deemed "a danger to public security".

In Germany, where an estimated 3.5 million Muslims live, Interior Minister Otto Schily has said that the authorities are watching 500 Islamists.

A law has been passed making it easier to expel "spiritual inciters to disorder" but the constitutional court has blocked the deportation of an imam who described Germans as "useless, stinking atheists".

Spain has no specific measures for monitoring imams who preach violence, but last month its Interior Minister said the country "cannot tolerate sermons which help sow the seeds for terrorism".

The measures overwhelmingly focus on the Sunni branch of Islam, which has no clergy, simply prayer leaders, or imams, who are the interpreters of the faith. Their status and training are often unclear. Some are self-proclaimed.

Only a minority of imams in Western Europe are natives of their host country - in the case of the 1600 imams in France, just one in five is French.

Many do not speak a European language and are confused or ignorant about secular European traditions, history and tolerance.