France will publish landmark report to expose spread of Muslim Brotherhood's influence

Interior minister warns laws and language of freedom and tolerance are being exploited to empower radicals

British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper greets Bruno Retailleau, France's Interior Minister, at the Border Security Summit in London. EPA

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has vowed to tackle Islamist extremism and its spreading influence by declassifying a report into its penetration of state and everyday institutions.

The Muslim Brotherhood infiltrates our associations, sports, studies, municipal elections’ lists

Bruno Retailleau

Speaking on the fringes of a two-day conference of interior ministry officials in London, Mr Retailleau said he was determined to take on the “words of hatred” promoted by Muslim Brotherhood figures such as its late leader, Yusuf Al Qaradawi.

“I will never, ever, confuse Islamic faith with this Islamist hatred that disfigures it,” Mr Retailleau told an audience at the Policy Exchange think tank. “We stand by this distinction.”

Warning of the dangers posed by “separatism” within communities, the rightist member of President Emmanuel Macron's minority government said infiltration in places such as schools and sports centres posed a challenge to the unity of French society.

“I believe that the Muslim Brotherhood makes use of entryism, which unlike separatism, wants to make all of society move towards a caliphate,” Mr Retailleau said. “It’s hard to fight because its speech is very smooth. It infiltrates our associations, sports, studies, municipal elections’ lists.”

He referred to the widespread promotion of protections against Islamophobia as instead creating a powerful form of victimhood.

“It speaks the language of freedom against freedom,” he said. “The language of tolerance against tolerance.”

Bruno Retailleau shakes hands with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer during the Border Security Summit in London. EPA

Announcing plans for a series of measures to contain a lurch away from French centrist positions, he said officials understood the extent of efforts to co-opt the state.

“I received a report on the Muslim Brotherhood a few months ago," he added.

“It’s classified today and I’ll declassify it soon. This is part of the first actions we must do [that will] inform the public, as well as the administration and politicians. We have to have this debate because the Muslim Brotherhood progresses under cover.”

Mr Retailleau said the report had raised questions for the ministry on how it would shape the legal framework to intervene and deal with the challenge to France's “national cohesion”.

ECHR failings

The minister, who has been in office since late last year, warned that this phenomenon was one of the issues that led him to question how much longer France could stay in the European Convention on Human Rights.

Its emphasis on “rights against laws” amounted to an “exultation of individual freedom in defiance of the collective framework”.

During his remarks, he wondered aloud if France could leave the body that was set up under the Council of Europe, which pre-dates the EU, if only for a temporary period for accession under a reformed court.

Citing a ruling that compelled France to repatriate its citizens from the ISIS camps of Syria and interventions to stop the expulsion of terrorism suspects from his country, he said the French would turn to radical politics instead of failed centrist leadership.

“What are such decisions based on? Not on the texts they extrapolate from, it is not written anywhere in European treaties or national legislation that Islamist foreigners, who are also terrorists and who constitute a dangerous threat, would benefit from an unlimited right of residence within the society they are fighting.

“If politicians do not regain power, citizens will have no other choice to protect themselves from Islamist extremism than to give in to populist radicalism.”