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Morocco to close schools allegedly linked to Turkish preacher Gulen
[AlAhram] Morocco has ordered the closure of schools it says are linked to a US-based Islamic preacher that ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... blames for a failed coup last year, the interior ministry said. "Investigations on the establishments of the Mohammed al-Fatih group, linked to Turkish national Fethullah Gulen ... a Turkish preacher living in Pennsylvania whom the current govt of Turkey considers responsible for all the ills afflicting Turkey and possibly the entire world... , showed they use education to spread the group's ideology and ideas contrary to the principles of the Moroccan educational and religious system," a ministry statement said. After a series of warnings from the education ministry, "it was decided all the group's educational establishments would be closed within a delay of one month", it said. The statement did not say how many schools or pupils would be affected but said the government would strive to ensure the students continued their education in other schools. In August, an official Turkish delegation visited Morocco to convince the authorities of the danger of Gulen's group. A school director from the Mohammed al-Fatih group at the time rejected any link with Gulen for seven schools teaching 2,500 students including 2,470 Moroccans. He said 90 percent of their teachers were also Moroccan nationals. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States since 1999, has denied any involvement in the July 15 failed coup aimed at toppling Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The preacher heads the Hizmet group which includes schools, associations and companies. Turkey, which calls it the Fethullah Terror Organisation (FETO), has embarked on a massive crackdown of the group. Posted by: trailing wife 2017-01-06 |
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