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Rabat- Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano ordered on Tuesday, August 5th, the immediate expulsion of a Moroccan imam after a video emerged online of a Friday sermon in which he publicly called for Jews to be killed "to the very last one.”
Minister Alfano ordered the expulsion of Raoudi Abdelbar, imam of the mosque in San Dona di Piave, a town near Venice, on grounds of causing serious public disorder, being a threat to national security, and advocating religious discrimination, according to an Interior Ministry press release.
Several sermons were delivered July 18-25, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), and then posted on the Internet. In one, he can be heard saying, “Oh Allah, bring upon them that which will make us happy. Oh Allah, count them one by one and kill them to the very last one. Do not spare a single one of them. Turn their food to poison, make the air they breathe blazing hot, make their slumber full of grief, and make their days black. Plant fear in their hearts,” according to a MEMRI translation.
The Italian Minister of the Interior said that Muslim cleric Sheikh Abd Al-Barr al-Rawdhi's sermon, delivered in the northern Italian city of San Donà di Piave on 29 July, had a "clear anti-Semitic tone" and constitutes "incitement to violence and religious hatred," according to a press release.
"Let my decision serve as a warning to all those who think it is possible to preach hatred in Italy,” warned Minister Alfano, stressing that he had made this decision after a thorough anti-terrorist police investigation conducted in collaboration with Venice’s public prosecutor.
During the expulsion of the imam, a member of the regionalist party and anti-immigrant Northern League called for the outright closure of the Mosque of San Dona di Piave and "a suspension of the opening of new mosques in the country."
Edited by Elisabeth Myers
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