Prague, Aug 30 (CTK) – The Czech secret service and police take interest in the former head of the Muslim community in Prague, Samer Shehadeh, who has warned Czech Muslims of betraying Islam by going to a mass along with Christians, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes yesterday.
The mass was held before a demonstration against terrorism in Prague earlier this month. About 80 Muslims from the Czech Republic and abroad met outside a Catholic church in Prague to protest against the growing violence in Europe and some of them symbolically attended the mass there.
After the divine service, 200 people, including Muslims, condemned terrorism. At the end of the event, they formed a human chain. Representatives of Muslims expressed solidarity with and sympathy for the victims of terrorism, mainly French priest Jacques Hamel murdered by Islamist militants.
“Those believing in Allah and the Judgment Day should not take part in the event. Allah is the witness that I warned of this,” Shehadeh, former imam of the Prague mosque, said in his message he also sent to Vladimir Sanka, former head of the Muslim Communities Center, before the mass.
Sanka, a native Czech, said he could not see anything problematic in imam Shehadeh’s words.
“”He only expressed his view that participation in a Christian mass is unsuitable. The form may not have been good, but Muslims are free and they act in keeping with their conscience,” Sanka told the paper.
“Whoever follows a different law-book than that with which Prophet Muhammad came, is an ingrate and apostate,” Shehadeh said in his speech in a Prague mosque, MfD writes, referring to the written and sound recordings from his lectures in the mosque in which he demanded that Sharia be implemented in the Czech Republic.
Czech Muslims have taken the first step towards their own rules in the Czech Republic by establishing a commission for the family that works as an Islamic court, Shehadeh said.
“Shehadeh approved of the attacks in London in 2005. When there was the growing pressure on Czech Muslims not to proclaim such a radical policy, he withdrew from public life and started shuttling between the Czech Republic and Slovakia where he lectures,” Lukas Lhotan, a Muslim apostate and expert in the Czech Muslim community, is quoted as saying.
Shehadeh does not conceal his views and he has published a number of audio messages on his webpage, MfD writes.
One of them, circulating among Muslims, explains why British cleric Haitham al-Haddada came to the Czech Republic. It was no formal visit, since he came with a clear task: to establish an Islamic court in the Czech Republic or an Islamic commission for the family that will play the role of an Islamic court, it adds.
“The commission has as its task to conclude marriages, naturally in harmony with Islam, to confirm divorces that have already occurred, to deal with marital problems and if need be, also to decide on the end of a marriage, which is a very extreme case,” Shehadeh, a native of Palestine, said.
Experts in extremism say the seemingly minor affair such as decisions on Islamic divorces is a clear sign of the aim to establish the Muslims’ own rules and the Sharia law, MfD writes.
“The efforts to introduce the Sharia appear in the family or business law. This may be one of the steps with which to gradually broaden the dimension of the Sharia law,” Miroslav Mares, an extremism expert from Masaryk University in Brno, told the paper.
This is evidenced by Shehadeh’s other words, MfD writes.
“A non-Islamic court cannot decide on the end of an Islamic marriage, ask the wise men. A Czech court cannot resolve this. We will resolve this instead of it,” Shehadeh said.
