Paris wants to draw on Morocco’s Imam training experience

Paris is looking forward to learning from Morocco’s extensive Imam training experience as it plans to stop hiring religious preachers from abroad, French interior minister Gerald Darmanin said.

Darmanin visited Rabat on April 22 and met both interior minister Abdelouafi Laftit and Morocco’s religious affairs minister Ahmed Taoufiq.

Following talks with Taoufiq, Darmanin said “the meeting was a chance to raise Islam in France,” he said, adding that the two officials also discussed French decision to stop hiring Imams.

“We are very interested in training Imams and the ways Morocco could help in that regard,” he said.

President Macron has ordered French authorities to train imams locally instead of relying on religious staff from Morocco, Algeria, or Turkey.

Building on its moderate school of Islam as a bulwark against extremism conducive to pre-empting radicalism at home and abroad, Morocco has extended the project of the Mohammed VI Institute, created in 2015, for the training of Imams to respond to the growing demand from a number of countries.

The Institute has offered training, accommodation and stipends to hundreds of Imams who are now practicing in their homelands spreading the lofty values of the religion.