The Grand Mosque of Geneva, has undergone sweeping leadership changes in recent months.
It has a new director, fresh from Jeddah, who suddenly fired four executives at the end of March. The Swiss daily Le Temps reported that the firings were initiated by the Saudi consul general in Geneva. The fired executives have sued, claiming they lost their jobs for being too moderate.
The new imam at the mosque is Youssef Ibram, a Moroccan who studied Islamic law for six years in Saudi Arabia. He is remembered in Switzerland for his part in a public controversy about the stoning of adulterers. In 2004, in an interview with the Swiss French magazine Coopération, he said,
“Regarding stoning, I cannot be against it since it is included in the Islamic law.”
The ensuing flap prompted Ibram to resign from his position as imam of the Islamic Center in Zurich. Ibram is also a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, a transnational group made up mostly of non-European Islamists close to the Muslim Brotherhood and headed by Al Jazeera star Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi. This body takes upon itself to assess the conformity of European laws to Islam.
Mere på The Weekly Standard /Limewoody
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