... the French government recently raided Muslim houses of worship in the country and found “one third of the quantity of war-grade weapons that are normally seized in a year,” as Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve put it.
The mosques implicated themselves “because they are run illegally without proper licenses, they preach hatred, or use takfiri speech," Hassan El Alaoui, one of France’s chief imams, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday; “takfiri” speech is that which levels accusations of apostasy at other Muslims.
El Alaoui also reported that the government will shut down between 100 and 160 mosques, approximately five percent of the nation’s 2,600 total.
In addition, authorities searched 2,235 Muslim businesses and homes and arrested 232 individuals. [S]everal of these [100-plus] mosques have been raided, revealing a "staggering" number of weapons and ammunition.
Sunday, authorities conducted a raid on a mosque in Lagny-sur-Marne, 18 miles east of Paris, and uncovered 334 weapons and a large quantity of 7.62mm Kalashnikov ammunition, along with ISIS propaganda videos.
Police also turned up recordings of chants "glorifying the martyrs of jihad linked to the terrorist organization Jabhat al-Nusra," the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda. The chants were found among teaching materials for youth in a madrassa, or private religious school for boys, connected to the mosque.
Although this story has not been widely reported, it should further fuel debate about the nature of Islam and the effects of wide-scale Muslim migration into the West.
This has been a major topic recently, with presidential contender Donald Trump suggesting that Muslim immigration should be suspended until we can “figure out what's going on.”