By the rigor of its content and the precision of its sources, the report published by the Ministry of the Interior on May 21, 2025 on the Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islamism in France marks a break. This 76-page document, signed by a group of senior officials, is neither a warning note like so many others, nor an ideological charge. It is a cold, meticulous x-ray of a phenomenon of slow, hidden, methodical influence, which the French state has underestimated for too long. And if this text is striking, it is because it finally says, in black and white, what many local elected officials, field officials, and clear-sighted intellectuals have been denouncing for years: the Brotherhood's entryism is a reality. And it undermines national cohesion.
A brotherhood with an integralist, structured and transnational ideology
From the very beginning, the report recalls the originality of the Muslim Brotherhood: far from the caricatures of hard-line Salafism, the brotherhood founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna claims a form of pragmatism. It adapts its discourse and modulates its priorities according to the terrain, but never abandons its foundation: the establishment of an Islamic society governed by Sharia law. A total Islam, encompassing all aspects of life, from law to the economy, including culture and family, poses a real danger for France or any Western society.
This is the whole danger of the Muslim Brotherhood project: its ability to hide in the interstices of the democratic model. To turn the very institutions of the Republic—freedom of association, freedom of worship, freedom of expression—into levers for its own propagation. "A secret society of a subversive nature," the report summarizes. An organization whose circles of power are composed of sworn, trained, and selected activists, according to quasi-initiatory procedures inspired by original Sufism.
France, land of expansion
Since the 1960s, France, along with the United Kingdom and Germany, has become one of the main laboratories of the Muslim Brotherhood project in Europe. Thanks to labor immigration and local political alliances, networks have patiently been woven there. The report bluntly singles out the Union of Islamic Organizations of France — which has become Muslims of France —as the main emanation of this movement. But beyond that, it is a whole nebula of educational, cultural, and charitable associations, mosques, private schools, and training centers that are being singled out.
This network aims to shape a counter-society. To regulate religious life, but also to influence public debate. To "produce meaning," in the words of the highly controversial Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the Brotherhood's founder, who remains one of the movement's leading thinkers, despite his repeated denials of membership. The report highlights his double-talk, like that of many Brotherhood preachers: a moderate stance in French, a radical discourse in Arabic.
One of the report's key contributions is to expose the systematic use of the concept of "Islamophobia" as a political lever. Is it a denunciation of very real racism? Not only that. The authors describe a structured mechanism for the permanent indictment of the Republic, designed to delegitimize secularism, discredit security measures, and portray France as a state that persecutes Muslims.
This process, theorized by Youssef al-Qaradawi, the Brotherhood's spiritual guide, is based on a logic of accusatory inversion. Dissolution of the CCIF, closure of non-contracted Quranic schools, expulsion of radical imams: each state measure is denounced as an attack on Islam itself. And the Brotherhood's networks, often subsidized by European funds or Qatari and Turkish intermediaries, relay this victimization vision to a segment of the youth.
National cohesion in danger
The report doesn't indulge in excessive alarmism. But it does make one observation: Muslim Brotherhood separatism is a local, visible, and documented reality. There are "ecosystems" of influence in certain areas, where community pressure stifles any desire for emancipation. Where elected officials, sometimes in good faith, collude with structures with ambiguous intentions. Where the authority of schools and republican institutions clashes with a powerful counter-ideology.
Preachers 2.0, social media, boycott campaigns, and calls for civil disobedience are all vectors of this. The report emphasizes the need to stem this trend, not through stigmatization, but through firmness: increased control over the funding of associations, evaluation of theological training, and a resolute defense of republican principles—including in official speeches.
By publishing this report, the Interior Ministry appears to be drawing a line under years of willful blindness. Certainly, political Islam is not Islam. Certainly, the majority of French Muslims reject the Brotherhood's theses. But these precautions must not obscure the reality: a political, Islamic, and conquering ideology is working in France to reshape the republican pact from within. The political responsibility is immense and almost complicit. Because this report, as dense as it may be, is not an end in itself. It calls for action. Emmanuel Macron understood this by demanding, in the Defense Council, measures “matching the seriousness of the facts”.
