France's Muslim Brotherhood report is manufacturing a threat

Middle East Eye

26-05-2025

A new government report, presented by France's Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, revives the spectre of the Muslim Brotherhood as an underground Islamist threat poised to capture local and national institutions.
But behind this alarmist framing lies a deeper political strategy: to delegitimise non-compliant Muslim political participation ahead of the 2026 and 2027 elections, and to bolster the far right parties as the most credible guardians of the republic against a manufactured enemy.
On 21 May, a confidential report - drafted by two civil servants and initially classified as "Secret Défense" before being leaked to Le Figaro - was presented to France's National Security Council. It warned of an alleged strategy of "entrism" by Muslim Brotherhood-linked actors to infiltrate and gradually transform public institutions, including schools, town halls, and sports associations.
While the report offered no specific names or data, it was swiftly amplified by government officials and conservative media figures. Retailleau described it as evidence of "Islamist submersion", while former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal called for new legislation on "separatism", including a hijab ban for girls under 15.
The narrative is familiar - and so is the timing.
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With the far right gaining traction and the left showing signs of revival in urban constituencies, the French President Emmanuel Macron's government and the traditional right are converging around a securitarian consensus. Retailleau's dual role crystallises this alignment.
The objective is not to counter Islamist influence, but to control electoral dynamics. After the near-defeat of the Rassemblement National (Le Pen's National Rally) in July 2024 - due largely to high turnout in left-leaning, working-class, Muslim-majority districts - the executive fears a repeat.
A 'strategic' fear
This fear is not ideological; it is strategic. The Gaza war has triggered widespread anger among French Muslims, particularly the youth. Many now view the state not just as indifferent, but complicit.
For Muslims in France, there is no safe place Read More »
In this climate, the prospect of renewed electoral mobilisation by Muslim voters is recast as a threat to national cohesion - not because of what it is, part of a widespread frustration with a failed voting system manipulated from the top, but because of what it disrupts: a well-established political machinery - the right and far right's race to dominate the narrative, rally conservative voters, and monopolise the field as the only viable custodians of republican order.
But what do we actually know about the Muslim Brotherhood's real presence in French political life?
Drawing on my 20 years of research on Islamist activism in France and my recent report on Muslim voting and political representation, I find no evidence of any coordinated electoral ambition linked to the Brotherhood networks.
On the contrary, my fieldwork shows that the narrative of a "Muslim political project" has been disproportionately shaped by political actors - especially from the right and far right - who weaponise visibility to preemptively delegitimise future candidacies.
What exists instead is a scattered, often localised landscape of civic engagement shaped less by religious ideology than by territorial injustice and political exclusion.
If religion plays a role in electoral decisions, it intersects with class position, local trust in institutions, and varying interpretations of democratic participation.
According to field interviews, Muslim voters are primarily motivated by concrete, everyday concerns: safe neighbourhoods, functioning public schools, and access to decent housing.
This civic engagement often takes the form of defensive participation - attempts to protect one's dignity in a system where being Muslim and politically visible remains highly suspect.
My research shows that even the most basic forms of civic expression, such as voting, are shaped by a desire to escape territorial discrimination rather than promote a religious agenda.
The myth of a Muslim bloc vote is sustained by political fantasy - often co-constructed by extreme-right anti-Muslim rhetoric and opportunistic mobilisation on the left
A significant share of socially conservative Muslims abstain, due to mistrust and a lack of credible representation by candidates who stigmatise them all year long but ask them to mobilise during elections "to block the far right".
The myth of a Muslim bloc vote is sustained less by sociological reality than by political fantasy - often co-constructed by extreme-right anti-Muslim rhetoric and opportunistic mobilisation on the left.
My findings show that such projections of cohesion obscure the diversity of political opinions among Muslims, which range from abstention to votes for mainstream left, centrist, or even conservative parties depending on the context.
When minority candidates from Muslim backgrounds are elected, they rarely position themselves along sectarian lines. Instead, they embody a sociological normalisation of France's diversity where Muslim mayors and MPs are no longer considered exceptions.
Imams, when they do offer voting instructions, do so more often at the request of candidates who canvass all their potential "constituencies" before elections than from their own initiative - much like in synagogues or churches before elections.
Political utility
Despite the disengagement of Brotherhood-inspired leadership and the disconnection between younger generations and any such legacy, the label persists. Not because it reflects a coherent political project, but because it offers the perfect scapegoat.
In fact, Muslim electoral mobilisation in France is far behind that of comparable European countries where Muslim elected officials have become a structural feature of democratic life.
Twenty years on, the French hijab ban is normalised across the political spectrum Read More »
The government's strategy depends on ambiguity. The report's vagueness is not a flaw - it is intentional. By invoking an invisible enemy, the state gains rhetorical power: to justify increased surveillance, repress dissent, and perform toughness for conservative audiences.
Despite this, even explicitly Muslim political formations like the Union des Démocrates Musulmans de France/Union of French Muslim Democrats (UDMF) or Parti Égalité Justice/Equality Justice Party (PEJ) have struggled to gain traction and acknowledgement, revealing that the "Muslim vote" is less an organised force than a projection of political anxiety.
This securitarian agenda has deepened since 2017. Under the pretext of combating "separatism", France has closed mosques, dissolved NGOs, and restricted public expressions of dissent.
These moves do not address violence; they police visibility. Muslim citizens are cast as a democratic firewall - useful only when voting against the far right, never empowered to vote for themselves.
The real question
This is not to dismiss all concerns about the rise of a rupture-oriented Islam among some young people as fabricated, but rather to argue that legitimate challenges - from addressing genuine disaffection to fostering authentic integration - are better addressed through inclusive democratic processes and representative politics than through surveillance and exclusion.
When citizens feel their voices can be heard through the ballot box and institutional channels, they are less likely to seek alternatives outside the democratic framework.
Many are tired of this. Fatigue is growing. The equation - vote for us to block Marie Le Pen's National Front - no longer resonates. After Gaza, the feeling is not just one of betrayal but of dispossession.
When citizens feel their voices can be heard through the ballot box and institutional channels, they are less likely to seek alternatives outside the democratic framework
This stems from France's political alignment with Israel during the war, its refusal to recognise the scale of civilian suffering in Gaza, and the repression of pro-Palestinian expression at home - from banning marches to silencing slogans.
Many young Muslims experience this not as foreign policy, but as the confirmation that their grief, their voices, and their political concerns are structurally illegitimate in the public sphere.
What haunts the political establishment is not radicalisation. It is the ballot box. The Brotherhood is not invoked because it poses a real threat to the republic. It is invoked because it provides a convenient frame to exclude and discredit a political subject that escapes official scripts: a post-colonial electorate that may no longer vote as expected.
Unless this script changes, France risks pushing an entire generation further from its institutions. Abstention, disaffiliation, or fragile protest coalitions may follow - none of them manageable through repression or electoral criminalisation alone.
The real question is not whether the Brotherhood is vampirising Muslim political claims and votes. It is why the French state still uses this frame to control the electoral behaviour of France's Muslims - revealing a profound misunderstanding of how younger generations of Muslims engage with politics today, and the full spectrum of their diversity.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.