The imam, Mohamed Touigani, may be nominated president of the conference of Belgian imams.
By CNAAN LIPHSHIZ/JTAProtesters burn Israel flag at embassy, Cairo_150(photo credit: Reuters)
A leading imam in Belgium prayed in a 2009 sermon for Allah to kill all Zionists and burn them in the blood of “martyrs.”The YouTube video of Imam Mohamed Toujgani was flagged earlier this week to the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, or LBCA, its president, Joel Rubinfeld, told the DH news website for an article published Wednesday.“Lord, master of worlds, fill with fear the hearts of the Zionist oppressors,” Toujgani is seen saying in the 31-minute sermon. “Lord, fill their hearts with fear. Lord, make the earth tremble beneath their feet. Lord, make the blood of the martyrs a weapon under the feet of the Zionists oppressors, and may this blood ignite a fire that burns them and start a wind that eviscerates them. […] O Lord, tear them down.”Rubinfeld said the text is anti-Semitic because “it just substitutes ‘Jew’ with ‘Zionist,’ he told DH.According to DH, Toujgani, the imam of the el Khalil mosque of Brussels, is tapped to be nominated president of the conference of Belgian imams. He has spoken in favor of tolerance and against jihadism in recent years.Toujgani declined to speak with DH when it contacted him for a reaction to the video, the news website reported.The article appeared on the fourth anniversary of the slaying of four Jews by an Islamist in Paris and amid preparations for the trial of another Islamist, Mehdi Nemmouche, for the murder of four people in 2014 at the Jewish Museum of Belgium.
