Hassen Chalghoumi (born Tunis, 1972) is the imam of the Drancy mosque in Seine-Saint-Denis (near Paris).
He has received many death threats for his statements, the latest being in January 2010, when he was chased out of his Mosque because of a statement he made in relation to the Islamic scarf controversy in France, supporting French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s draft law to ban the burqa. Some eighty people stormed the Drancy mosque, where he was chairing a meeting of the "Conference of Imams", an organisation that he founded in 2009 to improve interfaith relations in France.[1][2][3][4]
He was quoted as saying "with a bit of cloth over their faces, what can these women share with us? If they want to wear the veil, they can go to a country where it's the tradition, like Saudi Arabia".[5]
Married with five children, he studied in Syria and Pakistan before coming to France in 1996. Until 2005, he is a member of fundamentalist organization Tablighi Jamaat, whom he remains close. He is naturalised as a French citizen in 2005.[6]
Some of his critics call him "Imam of the Jews" for his activism with the French zionist organization CRIF. In 2006 his house was sacked and his children threatened after a speech he made in front of the deportation memorial in Drancy.[7]
In an interview in the Parisien he voiced the opinion that no man should refuse to allow his wife to be examined by a male doctor. At the beginning of 2009 he was invited to the Elysée and the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France (CRIF), a French zionist organisation.
Chalghoumi has questioned Western support for the 'Arab Spring', which has delivered a number of countries into the hands of Islamist groups.[8]