A long time ago, the warnings related to the creeping Islamic infiltration in Europe have been widely mocked as conspiracy or worse, “phobia of Islam”. In previous years, when politicians such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Michael Guff, British, or authors such as Michel Houlebecq from France, caused warnings about the spread of increasing political Islam on the continent, they were routinely rejected as magic, warning, or just racists.
These days, such concerns are more difficult to refute. Just ask the French.
Gety pictures
Last month, a new government report caused a national storm when conclude The Muslim Brotherhood, the most influential Islamic movement in the world, is trying to penetrate the country and sabotage its institutions. Study 73 pages, excerpts from them Deployed In the prestigious Lu FigaroHe explains that the Muslim Brotherhood branch in the country, known as the France of the Muslim Federation (FMF), is “involved in the republican infrastructure … in order to change it from within.”
Details of the study that FMF now controls or affects approximately 10 percent of mosques in the country, in addition to managing approximately 300 sports, educational or charitable organizations and is close to school of schools. Its goal is to create “ecosystems at the local level” that gradually imposes strict Islamic standards on society.
Warning is a blatant one. France has long been proud noA founding principle of the country’s political system, which provides freedom from, among them its citizens. FMF efforts are a direct challenge to this standard. Or, as Interior Minister Bruno Retario DevelopedFrance is now facing “Islamic under the radar that tries to infiltrate the institutions, whose final goal is to direct the entire French society under Sharia.”
As expected, the conclusions were received with the usual anger. The distant left leader, Jean -Luc Milinkon, for example, Advertise on social media The report was “nourishing the phobia of Islam” and filled with “fake theories” that are in line with the far right in the country.
Even the French president Emmanuel MacronWho ordered himself to produce the study in the past fall, after years of turning a blind eye, anxiety About the stigmatization of all Muslims and criticized the absence of ready solutions. He has I command “New proposals” to address the case in a timely manner for the next meeting of the country’s defense council in early June – although there are real doubts, given this Low popularity and The general image that was beatenThat Macron will be in a position that allows him to do anything meaningful. Voices on the country’s political right, and at the same time, You have grown The study is very small, and very late.
The French issue, though, is just a tip of the iceberg. 2023 report issued by the George Washington University program on extremism He pointed out that over the past few years, various security services across Europe have set up to “an extensive and advanced network linked to the Brotherhood working secretly in Europe, whether at the national or European level.” Moreover, he stresses that security officials on the continent are united in their conviction that “the networks of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe … have views and goals that are problematic, sabotage, non -democratic, and do not comply with the basic human rights and Western society.”
Some European societies, at least, began to wake up to this reality. In Austria, successive governments tried to reduce the perceived danger over the past decade by creating Reforms of Islamic Islamic LawClosing mosques and deporting extremist imams, and establishment A documentation center for research and monitoring political Islam in the country.
Germany was relatively active, and it started Home training for imamsGo up Monitor “legal Islam”, “ and Parliamentary discussion began On the ban of the Muslim Brotherhood. Other places in Europe, though, have done much less than the essence.
Meanwhile, even these steps, and others (like a 10 -point immigration anti -migration plan It was recently unveiled By the ruling party in Wilder for freedom) it suffers from a joint failure. This means that they view political Islam as an overwhelming foreign phenomenon-one that can be addressed through the hardening national borders, restrictions on immigrants, and the successive police.
But with the new French report, the danger is different. “The reality of this threat, even if it is long -term and does not involve a violent act, is a threat to the damage to society and the republican institutions (…) and on a broader scale, for national cohesion,” Stipulating. In other words, Islamic groups firmly inside Europe are trying to reshape Western societies in their own form.
Now that this is not ultimately comfortable in the open, the operative question becomes: What is France Macron, and the rest of Europe, actually ready?
Ilan Berman is the first vice president of the US Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC
The views expressed in this article are a writer.
