French court acquits Imam of incitement over sermon declaring “Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews”

A French court has acquitted an imam of incitement to racial hatred over a 2017 sermon in which he declared that “Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews”.

Mohamed Tataiat, the Imam of the Grand Mosque of Toulouse since 1987, was quoting a hadith popular among Islamists that “Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say, oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me — come and kill him.”

A legal case was pushed by numerous French Jewish organisations and anti-racism groups, but, following a three-month trial, the President of the Toulouse Criminal Court concluded that the sermon was not intended to “provoke hatred or discrimination,” and that “the words could have been said recklessly, but not with the desire to discriminate.”

Jewish leaders were unimpressed with the verdict, which some compared to the recent case of Sarah Halimi, whose antisemitic murderer was held to be unable to stand trial due to being high on cannabis at the time of the crime.

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Image credit: MEMRI