Hassen Chalghumi is an imam who preaches at a mosque near Paris.

Chalghumi has long enjoyed favorable press for his efforts to foster inter-religious dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

Chalghumi has been in the news recently for his views on possible legislation, in France, to prohibit women from wearing a burka in public: he’s in favor.

For Chalghumi, the burka has no basis in Islam or in the Coran. He calls it “a prison for women, a tool of sexist domination and islamist indoctrination.” He says that no woman in his town wears one.

The media attention left me perplexed, because I wasn’t sure what its point was. Is Chalghumi giving voice to mainstream Muslims, who can be in sync with French conservatives like Nicolas Sarkozy? Or is he noteworthy because his seemingly reasonable and certainly republican views are seldom heard in France?

News reports about Chalghoumi sparked twice this past week. On 25 January, an “islamist commando”, 80 members strong, reportedly stormed the mosque –Chalghoumi wasn’t present– caused a disruption, and threatened the imam. On 29 January, at Friday prayers, troublemakers again threatened Chalghoumi, who left the mosque under police protection. Chalghoumi made out complaints to the police.

For their part, persons opposed to Chalghoumi have responded with words, also carried in the media. They take the position that Chalghoumi is not really an imam, just the president of the association that administers the mosque, in other words that his role is administrative rather than spiritual.

I’m again left perplexed, because I still don’t see what the point is. Are extremists threatening a mild-mannered, tolerant preacher? Or have Chalghoumi’s credentials and leadership been called into question, in a manner akin to a shareholder proxy fight? And if Chalghoumi weren’t qualified as a spiritual leader, where would that leave his comments on the burka or interfaith relations?

One point has been passed over in silence. Hassen Chalghoumi’s Al-Noor (“light”) mosque, recently built, stands in the town of Drancy, north of Paris. I cannot be the only person for whom this name rings a bell: Drancy was home to an internment camp, from which 65,000 French Jews were deported during the war. The collaborationist Vichy government set up the camp in 1941; an SS officer named Alois Brunner took control in 1943. Brunner was tried, in absentia, for crimes against humanity, for which he was found guilty in France, in 2001.

Photo of Drancy camp, courtesy Deutsches Bundesarchiv