Rachid Eljay

Rachid Eljay, formerly known by the kunya Rachid Abou Houdeyfa, is a French imam and video creator of Moroccan origin, born on 3 November 1980 in Brest, Finistère¹. He became imam of the Sunna mosque in Brest in 2004 and built his fame on preaching lessons and videos on YouTube from 2007, until his channel reached about 2.82 million subscribers in platform figures of October 2026¹.

Eljay received his religious training from his father and through self-study, and worked as a grocer in Ille-et-Vilaine in 2003–04¹ before becoming imam and preacher of the Sunna mosque in Brest and a preacher in his neighbourhood¹. He became known for recorded lessons on subjects such as the resurrection and the signs of the Hour, and his videos reached millions of views¹.

Positions are reported here as the sources give them; they are their holders' statements, not the museum's verdict. In his early period Eljay followed a quietist Salafi line, and in a 2015 video on music, images and the legal veil he criticised positions of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, which condemned him; in April 2016 President François Hollande wrongly called him a "preacher of hate" on television, claiming his mosque had been closed¹. From late 2015 he dropped his kunya and changed course towards a Maliki discourse on the Moroccan traditional line, as the researcher Romain Caillet describes¹. In August 2016 the Islamic State's magazine Dar al-Islam called for his assassination, and the attacker Larossi Abballa named him in his video¹. Eljay received the "Religions, Law and Social Life" diploma from the University of Rennes on 19 December 2017¹.

On 27 June 2019 a gunman shot Eljay as he left his mosque, wounding him and another man; the gunman was found dead the same day¹. Eljay survived the attempt and resumed his activity¹. In September 2020 he co-launched the Dini TV educational platform, and he was later reported to have moved to Dubai¹.

Eljay is among the earliest French imams with a major digital presence, with about 2.82 million YouTube subscribers in platform figures of October 2026 — platform figures that change constantly and are not presented by the museum as fixed facts¹.

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