Political Islam: A real challenge and a regrettable opportunity for political one-upmanship

LeMonde

23-05-2025

The stern rebuke delivered by French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, May 21, during a national defense and security council meeting, temporarily put an end to the political escalation that followed the release of a report on the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in France. Even before the meeting convened, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau saw fit to seize the moment to demonstrate his resolve on a topic that haunts both the far right and the right as much as it fuels their electoral campaigns.
The organized leak of excerpts from the report highlighted a "country rotted from within by the Brotherhood ideology," according to conservative daily Le Figaro. A staging clearly intended to put the spotlight Retailleau's response. At the council meeting, Macron asked his interior minister to revise his approach and to address the issue with greater seriousness. Allowing political one-upmanship to fester and tensions to rise over such a sensitive topic is the best way to avoid dealing with it properly.
According to the report, commissioned by Retailleau's predecessor at the Interior Ministry and drafted by a diplomat and a prefect after a series of hearings, the long-term threat that political Islamism poses to "national cohesion" in France – particularly that associated with the Muslim Brotherhood – is a "reality." The report states that the Muslim Brotherhood is spreading its influence through "concealment, victimization and the quest for legitimacy," which is characterized by the "primacy of Quranic law over the law of the Republic," the "subordination of women," an "inability to accept otherness" and "anti-Zionism, or even antisemitism."
But, instead of using blustering rhetoric or dramatic action, the movement operates over the long term, organizing educational, social and cultural activities, and exerting "growing, sometimes violent pressure on local authorities." With municipal elections scheduled in March 2026, the denunciation of this kind of municipal "entryism," along with the rise of influencers spreading an Islam hostile to France's values, is the report's main message. Some experts have criticized the document for focusing on a movement they see as aging and in decline.
Promising avenues
The central question is how to counter this subervise work without stigmatizing the approximately 7.5 million people in France who identify as Muslim. Certainly not by reinforcing the right's reflex of portraying anyone of immigrant background as a potential Islamist, nor by echoing the rhetoric of radical-left La France Insoumise party, which sees a victim behind every Muslim. Escaping this double instrumentalization requires recognizing the great diversity of the Muslims of France – only 20% attend a place of worship – accepting that Islam is a French religion and being clear that laïcité (the French conception of secularism) is not directed against Muslims but aims to guarantee the free practice and coexistence of all faiths.
The report outlines some promising avenues, such as the need for a new rhetoric about the Republic, one that goes beyond laïcité alone, the development of Arabic language instruction and the structuring of Islam in the country. The effectiveness of the measures the government is to draw from the report in June will be the true test of France's ability to make the integration of Islam a key societal challenge, rather than just a sad pretext for pre-election sparring.