It is in spite of herself that Florence Bergeaud-Blackler has been talking about her for two weeks. The conference she was to deliver at the Sorbonne on May 12 was abruptly suspended, then postponed, by the dean of the Faculty of Letters for so-called “security” reasons. The CNRS researcher was to address students who are following a course to become “secular referents” in national education and who are therefore interested in relations between the Republic and religions.
At the origin of this suspension, a book, the result of long academic research on the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization born in the 1930s and which has since greatly extended its influence in Europe. Since the publication of Brotherhood and its networks, the investigation (Odile Jacob), its author, a woman yet erased and discreet, received no less than three death threats. Since then, she has been living under police protection and can no longer move around without bodyguards.
“This is what happens to people who talk about taboo subjects,” she says. However, this anthropologist has been interested in the rise of Islamism in France for 30 years. An Islamism that she discovered in Bordeaux when, as a young student, she was writing her thesis and visiting mosques.
“The Bordeaux mosque, Al Houda, particularly interested me because it was rather modern. I met there characters who contrasted with the image that we had at the time of the Muslims. These young people between the ages of 20 and 40 were doctors, dentists or political science students. They spoke impeccable French and maintained relations with elected officials or Islamic-Christian circles. They always presented themselves as people who wanted to establish a European or French Islam, far from foreign influences. I thought something new was happening. »
Coming from the generation of “Don’t touch my friend”, the young student had until then only known non-practicing Muslim friends who ate, drank and shared the same things as her. With the women of the Bordeaux mosque, she discovers an Islamism she did not know.
The brand of the Muslim Brotherhood
“I didn’t know I was in a mosque run by the Muslim Brotherhood. But I was going to figure it out pretty easily. I could see that it looked like the Muslim Brotherhood as it exists in Muslim countries. But, at the time, there was an absolute denial of the existence of this organization in France. I discovered a structured way of thinking and an organization that sought to extend throughout the territory. »
Born in Egypt in 1928, where they suffered repression that forced them into hiding, the Muslim Brotherhood arrived in Europe in the 1960s, explains Florence Bergeaud-Blackler. “Two revivalist branches, one Arab and the other Indo-Pakistani, will meet on European and American campuses. These pious Muslims were normally summoned to do the hijrah and to return to a Muslim country to live as Muslims. But since they had no interest in returning to where they had been expelled from, they remained in Europe and the United States and decided to mobilize the Muslims of these countries to accomplish the prophetic mission, the caliphate. In modern terms, the global and globalized Islamic society. »
Their action begins when young people from working immigration appear in France and whose parents had a more cultural conception of Islam, mixed with the local culture, says the anthropologist. “The Brothers will present themselves as more learned people, theologians, and explain to families that if their children want to remain Muslims, they will have to be re-Islamized. This period is that of the constitution of the Brotherhood ideology. »
“I went through the study of the halal market to understand it. Because, suddenly, we had to eat halal. And not just eat halal, but dress halal and watch halal videos. It was the study of this transition to the normative space of halal that led me to understand how influential the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood was. »
“With Canada, it’s butter”
The French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Musulmans de France (formerly the Union of Islamic Organizations of France) organize an annual fair at Le Bourget, in the suburbs of Paris, which attracts more than 100,000 people from all Islamic tendencies in France.
“That’s what made me realize that Brotherhood ideology was actually a system of action. The Brothers hate the fitna, the disorder. They want to unite not behind a single doctrine, but behind an objective which is the Caliphal mission. Everyone must therefore adhere to it and play their part. The main thing is to converge towards the same goal. It is a theocratic aim that lives in a democratic time. These militants accept life in a democracy, but without ever losing the goal of making it a theocracy. We adapt without ever assimilating. It is absolutely fundamental. It is absolutely necessary to prevent any assimilation. »
This explains why, in certain working-class neighborhoods, the Muslim Brotherhood will create enclaves, because there are neighborhoods in France that are real territories under Islamist control, says Florence Bergeaud-Blackler. This does not prevent other activists from infiltrating universities, culture or the political world, she continues.
“It’s about making society ‘Sharia compatible’. Once it is, little by little it spreads. The introduction of the concept of Islamophobia made it possible to impose language control. Each time we criticize Islamism, we are called upon to justify ourselves. If you don’t like Islamism, you are likened to someone who doesn’t like Muslims. In the face of Islamophobia, in order not to play into the hands of Islamophobes, we must not be divided. One cannot therefore speak ill of another Muslim. As for the solution to Islamophobia, it is always to re-educate the indigenous population — the non-Muslims — so that they can have a positive outlook on Islam. We are not adapting Islam to Europe, but the European view of Islam. It’s been going on for 30 years. »
The anthropologist believes that these strategies work even better in accommodating societies. “With Canada, it’s butter, since society is by nature accommodating. But this negotiation never stops. Because the goal ultimately, is never to become French or Canadian Muslims, but ambassadors of Islam in France or Canada. These people never stop regardless of the accommodations made. »
By reproducing numerous texts from this organization, Florence Bergeaud-Blackler illustrates the considerable ideological influence it exercises today. The European Union, which never misses the opportunity to feature veiled women in its advertisements, is one of the targets par excellence of this influence, says the anthropologist, because there is no real State for oppose claims presented from the angle of the fight against Islamophobia.
Since Tarik Ramadan, grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan el-Banna, there has even been an Islamist feminism. “It works,” she says, “because many women want to stay in Islam and dream of reforming it from within. To try to emancipate themselves, they went to draw on the theories of neofeminism, black feminism and the alliance with LGBT. This is logical, because the Muslim Brotherhood considers that one can ally with anyone as long as it serves the cause. »
In France, for 30 years, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood has grown so much, she says, that there is no longer anyone to compete with them. “In the past, consular mosques led Muslim worship. Today, it is the Brothers who have taken the place, and the consular mosques carry the suitcases. It’s a real reversal. »
Ardent critics
Dean of studies on Islam in France, Florence Bergeaud-Blackler has been strongly criticized by some of her colleagues since the publication of her book.
On his blog on the Mediapart website, the former CNRS research director François Burgat, who nevertheless collaborated with her for four years, does not beat around the bush. He criticizes him for assimilating any “visible sign of belonging to Islam” to the “Brotherhood matrix” and denounces a “bullshit falling within the delusional paradigm of the ‘great replacement'”. Burgat evokes a “fraternity bashing which would surf on the currents of left and right from Éric Zemmour to Marine Le Pen, passing by Caroline Fourest and academics as recognized as Gilles Kepel, Bernard Rougier and Pierre-André Taguieff.
On the contrary, the philosopher and Islamologist Razika Adnani celebrated “the work of an anthropologist which was carried out with great courage”. A column published in Point denouncing a “cabal” against an “in-depth, documented and sourced investigation on a sensitive and little-studied subject” received the support of more than 800 people, including the philosopher Élisabeth Badinter and the Algerian writer Boualen Sansal .
So it is with those who dare to address “a taboo subject”, says the main interested party, who obviously did not expect such a violent reaction. Postponed to June 2, his conference should take place under police protection.