French President Emmanuel Macron has attempted to downplay the significance of the explosive report from his own government detailing the infiltration of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in France and throughout Europe, warning against the spread of so-called conspiracy theories.
Last week, an intelligence report published by the French Interior Ministry quite literally alleged a decades-long conspiracy by the Muslim Brotherhood to develop an effective fifth column across Europe by entering EU institutions and gaining sway over Islamic associations and Muslim migrant communities with the explicit aim of instituting Sharia law in the West.
However, on Monday, President Macron attempted to downplay the scale of the issues raised by the report, which sent shockwaves throughout the continent.
In comments reported by Le Figaro, Macron acknowledged that the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration has been identified in “some neighbourhoods”, but said that the public “shouldn’t think that they are everywhere, because that can make you conspiratorial or paranoid.”
The statement from the French president, who reportedly urged against the publication of the bombshell report, appears to be more in line with those made by the Islamist-aligned far-left than those from his own government.
Indeed, the leader of the leftist La France Insoumise (France in Revolt/LFI) party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has branded the report itself as being “Islamophobic” and full of “conspiracy theories” from the so-called far-right. The report had noted that the Muslim Brotherhood explicitly uses campaigns against “Islamophobia” to marshal support and gain legitimacy in the public sphere, including by garnering support from the left.
Undeterred, Mélenchon went on to compare the warnings about radical Islam’s influence on European politics to antisemitism in the lead up to the Second World War, writing that “after ‘the Jewish plot’ of the 1930s, here is the ‘Muslim plot’.”
Fifth Column: Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrated European Institutions, Islamic Associations, Migrant Communities in Bid to Destroy West, French Gov’t Report Findshttps://t.co/bi8rFCH5QK
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 21, 2025
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, whose department released the report, responded by saying: “Jean-Luc Mélenchon and LFI are the accomplices and useful idiots of Islamism.”
“The progression of Islamist entryism is profound; few saw it coming. It is at the heart of a Republican fight. We cannot respond to taqiyya, to dissimulation, with omerta, that is to say, silence,” he added.
Retailleau has vowed to use government power to target the financial assets of Muslim associations with links to the Brotherhood movement, and to use intelligence services to target local “Islamist ecosystems” with the aim of preventing them from infiltrating government institutions down to the municipal level.
While some, including the populist National Rally party of Marine Le Pen, have called for the government to ban the Muslim Brotherhood as a proscribed terrorist organisation, the Interior Minister argued that such a move would be ineffective as it is “not so much a mass organisation as a school of thought.”
The ramifications of the report have not been confined to France, with the government of Sweden, after being identified by the French intel as a hotspot for the Muslim Brotherhood, announcing last week that it will launch an investigation into Islamist infiltration in its society.
There have also been calls for accountability at the EU level, given that the report found that the Muslim Brotherhood was not only permeating throughout European Union institutions but also being funded by various Brussels bureaucracies.
On Monday, a group of 50 Members of the European Parliament, led by French MEP and Le Pen dynasty scion Marion Maréchal, demanded that EU chief Ursula von der Leyen “explain the relationship between Brussels and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
They demanded information on EU subsidies being funnelled to Muslim Brotherhood-tied groups and on the infiltration of EU institutions. Finally, the group also called for Brussels to ban the Islamist network within Europe, saying: “The Muslim Brotherhood is a danger to Europe, the European Commission must fight it rather than finance it!”
EU Commission Promotes Islamic Youth Org with Alleged Ties to Muslim Brotherhoodhttps://t.co/yCghloZo1M
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 20, 2022
