By: V4 Agency
The interior minister announced in mid-September that he intended to disband a publishing company which promoted radical Islamist views in several publications and whose leaders were linked to jihadists.
Barely two weeks after the French interior minister announced his intention to disband the Islamic book publisher Nawa, based in the southwestern department of Ariege, the council of ministers greenlighted and carried out the decision on the publisher’s dissolution at its meeting on 29 September.
According to Le Figaro, the ‘Nawa Center for Oriental Studies and Translation’ on its website presents itself as a publisher established to promote the humanities and political sciences arising from Muslim heritage and to contribute to the renewal of these disciplines by studying the Western world and current political doctrines. The company is led by Abu Soleiman Al-Kaabi and Aissam Ait Yahya, who have published and translated several books.
The decree, announced on Twitter by IM Gerald Darmanin, was issued by President Emmanuel Macron on the basis of a report provided by the prime minister and the interior minister. According to the decree, the publishing house has published several books legitimising jihad.
The decree refers to the Domestic Security Code, which states that any association should be disbanded which incites discrimination, hatred or violence against a person or group of people on the basis of their origin, sex, perceived or real affiliation, sexual orientation or gender identity, or which incites or carries out activities aimed at committing terrorist acts in France or abroad.
According to the decree, the editorial office of Nawa promoted extremist Islamic doctrines by publishing twenty-six books written by members of fundamentalist or radical Islamist movements.
As an example of extreme Islamist content, the decree cites a book published in 2017, which was translated and commented on by the head of the association, practically legitimising the stoning of homosexuals and women who commit adultery.
Another book talks about the acceptability of violence and murder committed against those who refuse to pray and repent, but this is not all, the publisher has also published anti-Semitic books and translations. One of them, published in May 2013, clearly incites the killing of Jews. Another proof of Nawa’s sympathies for terrorists is the fact that they regularly published the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda’s flag (or a part of it) on the backcover of their books.
A comment on internet says a vice president of the publishers, a certain AAY (presumably referring to Aissam Ait Yahya) is the treasurer and spiritual leader of the jihadist organisation AnaMuslim, who called jihad a legitimate act at a 2019 police hearing.
According to a Twitter post by the interministerial committee SG-CIPDR last November, Islamist activist Aissam Ait Yahya had good relations with the Muslim organisation the French Collective Against Islamophobia (CCIF), which had also previously been disbanded and which had promoted Ait Yahya’s doctrines.
Aissam Ait Yahya had already made headlines in the French press years ago, when in 2016 the weekly Le Point reported that because of his faith, the man categorically repudiated the Republic and praised revolutionary Islam, which rejects democracy.
According to the decree issued by the French president, as the publisher operates in France, it is to be regarded as an organisation that carries out activities aimed at inciting acts of terrorism. The president and vice president of the Nawa association operate in a milieu linked to radical Islamist movements, and therefore all the organisation’s financial resources have been frozen and their assets are to be liquidated.