With France seeking to expel radical Muslim leaders, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin on Monday criticized clerics who are more "political preachers" than men of religion.
Speaking in parliament, Raffarin said the government has new legal powers allowing it to punish "all those who engage in racism or anti-Semitism."
"We have the legal means to show firmness — including expelling all those who say they are imams but are in fact political preachers who have nothing to do with religious expression," he said.
France has taken the lead in a get-tough trend among some European governments over Islamic extremism, setting a policy of actively going after imams — prayer leaders — whose discourse veers into a defense of violence or runs counter to human rights.
At least two imams have been expelled since January, with the government threatening to expel two more. A fifth is under arrest.
The government crackdown has not been without setbacks. Abdelkader Bouziane, an Algerian expelled from France last month, has won a court ruling allowing him to return. The government says he advocated violence in his sermons, and French media have quoted him as saying he favors wife-beating and stoning of women.
The concern has been heightened by a realization that a generation of marginalized Muslim youths is growing up alienated from French mainstream society. These youths are widely blamed for a wave of anti-Semitic violence in France.
Most of the 1,500 imams in France come from abroad, and fewer than half speak French. The country's Muslim community of 5 million is the largest in western Europe.