France's Interior Minister Valls stands on a
France's Interior Minister Valls stands on aReuters

France announced Thursday that it will expel any foreigners who pose a threat to the country’s security at home or abroad, either in the name of Islam or by refusing to respect the country's secular traditions, Interior Minister Manuel Valls said Thursday.


France will be "intransigent... and I will not hesitate to expel those who claim to follow Islam and represent a serious threat to public order and as foreigners in our country do not respect our laws and values," he said at a ceremony to inaugurate a grand mosque in the eastern city of Strasbourg, according to AFP.

"The preachers of hatred, those espousing obscurantism and fundamentalists ... do not have a place in France," he said. "Racism, fundamentalism is not part of Islam."

"Those who are on our soil to defy our laws and want to attack the foundations of our society cannot remain here," he added.

The new mosque can hold 1,500 worshippers and is the biggest in France, which has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe.