France urged to ban powerful Muslim group

The Paris office of the Los Angeles-based Simon-Wiesenthal Center has urged France to investigate links between the Union of Islamic Organizations in France (UOIF) and pro-Palestinian groups allegedly collecting money for the militant Islamist group Hamas. The center's director, Shimon Samuels, said the UOIF was a radical political organization linked to the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual guide Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, who had issued fatwas supporting suicide bombers. It also linked the UOIF to a pro-Hamas group banned in the United States. Samuels also provided texts from a forum on the UOIF website which he said documented the anti-Semitic views it condoned. Fouad Alaoui, the UOIF's secretary general, denied his group was anti-Jewish and instead accused the Wiesenthal Center of wanting to block the integration of Muslims into French society. However, Alaoui has sent a letter to the president of the French Jewish umbrella body CRIF, Roger Cukierman, in which he condemns statements made by Hassan Iquioussen, a radical Islamist preacher accused of anti-Semitism.