European Muslim Brotherhood Criticizes French President For Speech Against Islamism 

The Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (CEM) has issued a state­ment crit­i­ciz­ing French Pres­i­dent Macron for a speech on com­bat­ing Islamist sep­a­ratism giv­en in ear­ly Octo­ber. Accord­ing to the state­ment:

The recent speech by French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron, in which he pre­sent­ed his plan to com­bat what he called “Islam­ic sep­a­ratism,” has sparked dif­fer­ent reac­tions. The Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims rais­es deep con­cerns over the neg­a­tive impli­ca­tions of this speech.

In this regard, the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims affirms that:

- The coun­cil con­sid­ers the use of the term “Islam­ic sep­a­ratism” to specif­i­cal­ly tar­get the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty offensive.

- As we strong­ly sup­port the efforts fight­ing extrem­ism, we also reject any threat to pub­lic and reli­gious freedoms.

- By describ­ing Islam as “a reli­gion that is in cri­sis all over the world,” Macron has tar­get­ed all Mus­lims inside and out­side of France and threat­ened the social coher­ence and peace.

Read the rest here.

In his speech, Macron pro­posed leg­is­la­tion requir­ing pri­vate schools to agree to teach sec­u­lar val­ues in an effort to com­bat the favor­ing of reli­gious rules over repub­li­can laws among the country’s grow­ing Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion. Oth­er pro­pos­als include stricter con­trol over for­eign fund­ing of mosques as well as require­ments that imams are trained and cer­ti­fied in France. French PM Manuel Valls has recent­ly said the law’s real sub­ject was the bat­tle against the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Salafists.

After the behead­ing of a French geog­ra­phy teacher who had shown car­i­ca­tures of the Prophet Muham­mad to his class in mid-Octo­ber 2020, the country’s gov­ern­ment ordered a crack­down on groups accused of rad­i­cal­ism, car­ry­ing out dozens of raids and tem­porar­i­ly shut­ting down mosques. Fol­low­ing these actions, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that, as part of this crack­down, the French inte­ri­or min­is­ter indi­cat­ed he wants to dis­solve the Col­lec­tif Con­tre l’Islamophobie en France, an Islamist influ­ence oper­a­tion with mul­ti­ple rela­tion­ships to orga­ni­za­tions that are part of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe, a transna­tion­al Islamist net­work cov­ered by the GIOR.

The Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (CEM), pre­vi­ous­ly known as The Fed­er­a­tion of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions in Europe (FIOE), is an umbrel­la group that com­pris­es the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe. The CEM has strong ties to Hamas and Hamas fund-rais­ing orga­ni­za­tions, and in the past, some of its mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions have shown evi­dence of links with Al-Qai­da. The FIOE has also spawned numer­ous oth­er orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Euro­pean Coun­cil for Fat­wa and Research (ECFR) and the Forum of Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tions (FEMYSO).