Eurasia Press & News
The French government on Monday said it would take new measures to tackle the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in France, including the disbanding of endowment funds and a new asset-freeze mechanism.
An official 74-page report on the Muslim Brotherhood “required more ambitious proposals” from the state, the Elysee said in a statement, after a high-level meeting with a small group of cabinet members.
The council meeting was also intended to bolster the implementation of a 2021 “anti-separatism” law, which has enabled the shutting down of hundreds of schools, businesses and sports associations suspected to have ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The government will launch a campaign to raise awareness about the group ahead of the next municipal elections in March 2026. Hospital staff and sports teachers will be targeted, the Elysee said.
Youth sports associations are viewed as one of the ways the Muslim Brotherhood propagates its values, which are considered to go against the state’s founding principle of secularism, or “laicite”.
Mr Macron said it was important to avoid a “double trap,” the statement said: naivety towards the group and conflating all Muslims with extremism.
The French President had told ministers to come up with “new proposals” after a Defence Council meeting in late May. The meeting was called because the Interior Ministry had published a report mapping out the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence on French and European civil society.
A risk for ‘national cohesion’
Action must be taken to stop the spread of political Islamist extremism, said the report, written by former French ambassador Francois Gouyette and prefect Pascal Courtade. A redacted version that withheld sources’ names was made public on May 25, one year after it was commissioned by former interior minister, Gerald Darmanin.
“The reality of this threat, even if it is long-term and does not involve violent action, poses a risk of damage to the fabric of society and republican institutions … and, more broadly, to national cohesion,” it said of the Muslim Brotherhood. It estimated the group has a dedicated following with a “few hundred members in France”.
Mr Macron faces mounting pressure from both the right-wing party Les Republicains, led by his Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, and the far-right’s National Rally to toughen his stance against the Muslim Brotherhood.
“By convening this Defence Council, [he] intends to show that he is not remaining inactive on the front line of the fight against Islamist “entryism”, daily newspaper Le Figaro said.
This debate is rooted in the aftermath of the wave of 2015 deadly ISIS-claimed terror attacks in France, in the wake of which Mr Macron was elected president, according to Elysee sources.
In a famous speech in 2020, Mr Macron said that there was a “crisis in Islam” which was “blighted by radical temptations and an aspiration to a reinvented jihad”.
Legal crackdowns
Among the most high-profile cases of institutions targeted by the 2021 law is the Averroes private school in the northern city of Lille, which has been the object of a power struggle between the prefecture and the judiciary.
In April, Lille’s administrative court reversed a prefecture decision denying the school its state contract. This means that the level of teaching matches public schools.
The prefecture had accused the school of illicit financing and of dispensing a course in Islamic ethics that conflicted with state values.
Another institution that has been in the spotlight is the European Institute for Human Sciences (IESH), which teaches theology and the Arabic language.
After a warning that it may be dismantled, the institute said in a press release on June 23 that this would be “counter-productive”. “Our commitment is based on a critical, contextualised and responsible approach to sources, aiming to deconstruct extremist discourses,” it said.
The IESH was quoted in the Muslim Brotherhood report, which pointed at an unsourced recent analysis of its 2010-2020 teaching programme. It confirms a “personal, doctrinal and institutional [link] with the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Some analysts say that the French government has overlooked ideological differences between Islamic schools of thought. The Muslim Brotherhood in France is “declining”, said Franck Fregosi, research director at France’s state-run National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS).
In an interview with daily Le Monde last week, he pointed at the fact that the group’s previously large annual meetings at Le Bourget, near Paris, have since dwindled to “a hundred people at most”.
“It would have been relevant to take a parallel interest in Salafists who are dynamic and effectively disseminate their interpretation of Islam on social networks, particularly among young people,” Mr Fregosi said.
‘Culture of secrecy’
Still, others view the Brotherhood as a sophisticated ideological threat. While the report says that the group has a few hundred members in France, it accuses them of employing “double talk” and “self-dissimulation”. Its culture of secrecy is anchored in late Egyptian founder Hassan Al Banna, who aimed through it to evade British colonial rule.
The case of French-born Moroccan imam Hassan Iquioussen, who fled France after the Interior Minister stated the intention to expel him in 2022, is presented as a typical example of such a culture. Though he has publicly espoused gender equality, the report’s authors pointed at earlier sermons advocating strict gender roles incompatible with French laws.
Islamophobia is another concept regularly used by people linked to the Brotherhood. The report pointed at the case of French-Moroccan preacher Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Paris court in December for his role in leading a hate campaign against a schoolteacher. He accused Samuel Paty, who was beheaded in 2020 by an extremist, of victimising Muslim students.
The report described Mr Sefrioui as “an archetype of hybridisation between Salafism and Muslim Brotherhood … who was very close to Dhaou Meskine, former founder of Ennahda (Tunisia)”. Mr Sefrioui has lodged an appeal and will be judged again in early 2026.
European networks
At the centre of the Brotherhood’s efforts to influence European rules lies the Brussels-based Council of European Muslims (CEM), which oversees hundreds of organisations across 28 European countries, including the Muslim Association of Britain.
Denials of its affiliation to International Organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood (OIFM) are contradicted by the fact that a number of officials have shared responsibilities, according to the report.
They include the council’s director, Abdallah Ben Mansour, who also represents Europe in the OIFM. “No member of the CEM claims to belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, yet a bundle of clues nevertheless to identify an ideological and structural continuum between the CEM and the OIFM,” says the report.
It points at: “Intellectual references to the Brotherhood’s thinking, presence of European executives in the two structures, participation of the OIFM in the meetings of the CEM, and joint meetings organised in Turkey.”
While it claims to train grassroots leaders in cultural mediation, the CEM also allegedly trains them in tactics to avoid extremist talk, the report says.
Among its important figures is Ibrahim Al Zayat, 57, born in Germany of an Egyptian father, who has been involved at senior level in a number of organisations alleged to have ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. They include international NGO Islamic Relief Worldwide.
From 1996 to 2002, Mr Al Zayat also presided over Femyso, viewed as the youth branch for the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and the subject of receipts of European Commission grants.
Mr Al Zayat is married to the niece of Turkish politician Necmettin Erbakan, founder of Milli Gorus, described as “the other European Islamist movement of brotherhood inspiration”. Its anti-Semitic and creationist views are the “vector of a separatist project from secular European societies”, the report says.
In February 2022, Milli Gorus’ headquarters in Germany ousted the historic leader of its French branch, Fathi Sarikir, after he signed a charter of values of Islam in France. The report could not determine the depth of operational relations between Milli Goru and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Less in the limelight but no less important is French citizen Fouad Alaoui Bouarraqui, described as the “kingpin of the European movement” of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2022, Mr Bouarraqui was appointed head of the shura council of the council of European Muslims. The following year, Mr Bouarraqui became a member of the international council of the international union of Muslim scholars, which is part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s international structure. He also held high-level jobs in the UK charity Europe Trust and presided over the UOIF, the brotherhood’s main structure in France.
The report identified several clusters of schools and grassroots associations in France under Muslim Brotherhood influence, particularly in the southern city of Marseille. One such figure is Smain Bendjelali, a former imam sentenced in May to a six-month suspended prison term for reposting social media posts legitimating Hamas’ attacks in October 2023 against Israel.
“With a rather Salafist leaning but using the codes of Muslim Brotherhood, he enjoys great popularity among young Muslims, notably due to his mastery of social networks,” the report said.
After the verdict, Bendjilali said he would resume his religious activities “with pride”, starting with a Friday sermon.
