A major four-day annual gathering of French Muslims in northern Paris will proceed as scheduled after a French administrative court struck down a government attempt to ban the event in a last-minute ruling delivered just two hours before the gathering was set to open at 14:00 local time.
The Paris Police Prefecture had justified the ban by citing heightened national and international security tensions, arguing the event — known as the Annual Encounter of Muslims of France — faced significant risk of terrorist targeting against attendees, and that far-right extremist groups could mobilize to disrupt the gathering, potentially with remote backing from foreign actors. French authorities have repeatedly accused nations including Russia and Iran of fomenting domestic division through proxy groups carrying out small-scale provocations and sabotage. Police also claimed the gathering would place an unsustainable strain on local law enforcement resources.
Organized by the Muslims of France (MF) association, the largest Muslim representative body in the country, the event combines religious and cultural conferences with a commercial trade fair. The gathering was a long-running annual tradition that regularly drew tens of thousands of attendees from across Europe before it was paused in 2019. Critics have long claimed MF has close ties to the international Muslim Brotherhood, an allegation the organization repeatedly denies.
Following the ban announcement, MF filed an emergency injunction to challenge the government order, arguing that a prohibition would violate fundamental French civil liberties. In its ruling, the court sided with organizers, finding that evidence provided by police failed to prove a concrete risk of counter-protests or targeting by far-right groups. The court also rejected the police resource strain argument, noting that event organizers had already committed to funding and deploying additional private security measures.
The court decision comes amid a broader policy push by the French government to advance a new anti-separatism law, primarily targeting religious institutions that promote ideologies deemed inconsistent with French republican principles. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez explained the proposed legislation would build on a similar law enacted five years prior, which allowed the government to shut down associations accused of spreading Islamic separatism. Nunez noted that existing legal powers left gaps in regulation, particularly for oversight of collective childcare services, and that the new law would also enable authorities to ban publications that incite hatred, violence, and discrimination.
During the injunction hearing, MF lawyer Sefen Guez Guez argued that the proposed ban represented a clear violation of the constitutional right to peaceful assembly, and that the government’s push for the prohibition was primarily a political maneuver to build support for its new anti-separatism legislation. In response, legal representatives for the police maintained that the ban was rooted exclusively in public safety concerns, and rejected claims that the order was anti-Muslim or anti-Islam.