The expulsion of the Islamic leader Mohamed Said Badaoui – who received the support of the Parliament after his arrest – is part of a police strategy against the increase in radicalization that is taking place in Catalonia. The so-called imam of Reus was one of the profiles that the National Police has monitored because they allegedly dedicate themselves to generating "hatred towards everything that is Western", causing a "stress climate" among the most vulnerable Muslim population, such as the minors or women. Specifically, according to police and judicial sources explained to L a Vanguardia, Badaoui used the sharia –or Islamic law– to preach “an almost combative Salafism” with radical speeches in which he presented women as “inferior” beings and encouraged young people to rebel against the Spanish institutions.
The National Police – which works hand in hand with the National Intelligence Center and the Mossos d'Esquadra in this matter – has the power to investigate the administrative process that leads to expulsion thanks to the Immigration Law. The Ministry of the Interior resorts to these expulsions – the Badaoui one was also endorsed by the National Court – when it has sufficient indications that a foreign citizen is putting coexistence at risk with hate speech that can germinate in society, causing, in the medium and long term, term, social problems. Crimes related to jihadist terrorism do not fit into this administrative process. Neither is everything that is protected by religious freedom.
Legal sources explain that the Police work on a fine line because that religious freedom sometimes goes further and clashes with our democratic model, such as the position of women. There is another added problem, which is creating that germ of classifying second-class citizens that has later translated into radical behaviour, and some taken to the extreme have ended up embracing jihadism. In this line between freedoms and crime is where the Police work to stop these messages.
With these expulsions, sources from the General Information Commissariat have an impact, the point is to avoid polarization. They are leaders of communities over which they have a great deal of influence with discourses that go against Western democratic values. Thus, they try to create victims of a system from which to feel oppressed. This is the pattern that Badaoui followed, according to the complaint signed by the National Police that ended in his deportation to Morocco, with the coordination of Rabat. His tool was the sharia, the code of conduct that governs all aspects of Muslim life. It is not a manuscript, but rather a set of texts that is subject to interpretation. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled on two occasions that Sharia law is "incompatible" with democracy and, therefore, contrary to human rights.
As sources in the case say, one of the pages of the police report gives an example of "the imposition" that Badaoui makes "on the women around her to go fully covered." Also "the denial of women's right to freedom and equality by considering them inferior and that they should be subject to any man, especially her husband." In this line, it is stated that "justifies violence in the domestic sphere to achieve such submission." Researchers who have expressed that "women must be completely covered" and that they do not have the right to decide for themselves have also been accredited.
