Emmanuel Macron assembled some of his top ministers at the Élysée on Wednesday. Their purpose was to devise a strategy to counter the growing expansion in France of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The nebulous organisation, formed in Egypt in 1928, has as its aim a global caliphate and it is in Europe where it is enjoying its greatest success. In many Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan and Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is proscribed.
The French report describes Britain as an ‘outpost’ for the Middle Eastern branch of the Muslim Brotherhood
The Brotherhood’s influence in France was detailed in a 73-page report that was declassified this week by Bruno Retailleau, the Minister of the Interior, who has long warned about their infiltration into all walks of French life.
The report’s authors, an ambassador and a senior prefect, carried out extensive research in France but also elsewhere in Europe. Among their interviewees were academics and Muslim leaders at national and local level.
The report disclosed that 7 per cent of the 2,800 Muslim places of worship in France have links to the Brotherhood; this represents around 91,000 regular worshippers.
The organisation also has a strong presence in cultural and sporting associations. But most troubling is its influence in schools. This is perhaps not a surprise. A 2021 survey reported that 65 per cent of Muslim secondary school pupils in France attached more importance to the laws of Islam than the laws of the Republic.
Although that poll caused much comment in France, little was done to try and arrest what the French call the ‘re-Islamisation’ of their Muslim population. Will this latest report spur the Republic into taking concrete action?
According to reports, Macron has expressed his concern about the ‘seriousness of the facts’, and has instructed his government to present a raft of new proposals to combat the Muslim Brotherhood at the start of next month.
An Élysée spokesman said the president recognised the Muslim Brotherhood was a ‘threat to national cohesion’, and that it was imperative to ‘inform the general public and local elected representatives about the threat and how it works.’
One area of concern is social media, which the report says is used by the Muslim Brotherhood to ‘question what the Republic stands for in terms of laïcité [secularism], in particular to try and demonstrate that the state is Islamophobic.’
The report places particular emphasis on the Brotherhood’s strategy of Islamophobia, ‘and its corollary, victimisation’; it has proved a very effective method of winning the hearts and minds of impressionable young Muslims on social media.
This strategy was highlighted by Retailleau in London last month when he addressed the Policy Exchange in a talk entitled ‘The Islamist challenge: how should free societies now respond?’
Political Islamism, warned the Interior Minister, ‘has taken up the great victim narrative to present European Muslims as the new scapegoats, the new damned of the earth’. He defined Islamophobia as a strategy to ‘paralyse consciences and paralyse wills.’
Arguably, nowhere in Europe has this strategy been more successful than in Britain. The French report describes Britain as an ‘outpost’ for the Middle Eastern branch of the Brotherhood, and there is growing concern in France at what is happening across the Channel.
Alexander del Valle, who was a French national defence advisor in the late 1990s, warned last year that several northern towns and cities in England ‘have become Islamic bastions, encouraged by Muslim Brotherhood propaganda.’
This is an extraordinary, not to mention alarming, state of affairs given that Britain conducted its own investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood a decade ago. Commissioned by the then-Prime Minister David Cameron, the review was headed by Sir John Jenkins, Britain’s former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, but his findings were largely ignored. As Sir John wrote in Coffee House earlier this year: ‘Successive British governments have seemed to believe that if only we ignore Islamism or pay attention only when a bomb goes off on the Tube or someone is horribly murdered… then everyone will get along nicely and everything will be fine. It won’t.’
The work of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain is made easier by the fact that ‘Islamophobia’ has become an article of faith for the many in the establishment. The Labour government is expected to soon tighten the definition of what constitutes ‘Islamophobia’ based on a 2019 report by an All-Party Parliamentary Group. They said Islamophobia is ‘rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.’
The Muslim Brotherhood in Europe does not use violence; soft power is far more effective. Local politics as well has been a particularly successful way for them to plant roots across Europe.
One of the reasons why Bruno Retailleau declassified this report is to draw the public’s attention to the Muslim Brotherhood ahead of the 2026 local elections in France. ‘There’s a risk next year that they’ll be running in local elections with the rhetoric: “If you take us on, we’ll bring in a bunch of votes”,’ he said in a recent interview.
The declassification of the report, and this week’s meeting at the Élysée, has dominated the print and broadcast news in France. The Muslim Brotherhood will not enjoy having such a harsh light shone on it. Fortunately for the organisation, it is still able to operate in the shadows in Britain.
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