France’s Enemies Welcomed Through the Front Door

While France’s own security experts were compiling a report warning of Islamist infiltration into the very institutions of the Republic, President Emmanuel Macron was receiving, at the Élysée Palace, one of the world’s most notorious jihadist terrorists: Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

Just weeks before this damning report reached his desk, Macron welcomed Jolani, the leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—a former affiliate of both ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Jolani has presided over a reign of terror across Syria that includes massacres, executions, religious persecution, and the systematic targeting of civilians based on their religious, sectarian, and ethnic affiliation.

From orchestrating the massacres of thousands of Alawite and Christian civilians in Syria’s coastal region earlier this year, to launching a brutal assault on the Druze community in southern Damascus just weeks ago, Jolani’s crimes are well documented and ongoing. His forces have committed executions, torture, crucifixions, rape, stonings, and the sexual enslavement of women and girls.

HTS has also employed the horrific practice of so-called Jihad al-Nikah, through which women and girls have been subjected to systematic rape and slavery, under a distorted manipulation of religion. This is not a ‘pretext’: it is a barbaric and unforgivable crime, and no ideology, doctrine, or political justification can ever excuse it.

Under Jolani’s direct command, HTS has executed Alawite, Druze, Shia, Christian, and Kurdish civilians, carrying out sweeping campaigns of ethnic, religious, and sectarian cleansing. They have beheaded Lebanese soldiers, kidnapped Christian nuns in Maaloula, and destroyed places of worship.

Jolani is not a ‘reformed’ figure. He is a war criminal, responsible for crimes against humanity that continue to this day.

And yet, while the French public is being warned of rising Islamist extremism at home, Macron chose to legitimize one of its most dangerous global symbols, offering him not condemnation, but credibility.

The timing could not be more revealing. The very report now sitting on Macron’s desk exposes a deliberate strategy of “entryism” by the Muslim Brotherhood, an ideologically extremist movement that stands at the root of nearly all modern Islamist terrorism, from Hamas to Al-Qaeda.

The report details how Brotherhood-linked organizations have penetrated schools, local governments, associations, and mosques across France. They are constructing closed ‘ecosystems’ that seek to reshape community norms, enforce religious dress codes, and undermine secular values from within.

It also exposes the massive financial and political backing of these Islamist networks by Qatar and Turkey, two authoritarian regimes that have long supported the Muslim Brotherhood. But this isn’t limited to ideology. These are the very same regimes that have also supported Abu Mohammad al-Jolani and his terrorist group HTS, not just politically and financially, but also through military, logistical, intelligence, and training support.

Is this a coincidence?

Of course not. It is part of a coherent, dangerous pattern, a transnational Islamist project, driven by a shared ideology, implemented under different banners, and backed by the same state actors who seek to expand their influence by exporting extremism.

And this brings us to the uncomfortable question:

Have we reached a point where foreign autocracies dictate the boundaries of our democracies, exploiting our institutions, shaping our policies, and purchasing silence through short-term financial partnerships and political convenience?

The truth is sobering. In today’s political landscape, too many leaders care more about surviving their term than securing their country’s future. When the inevitable consequences emerge—another attack, another radical cell exposed—they simply pass blame to their successors, especially if the next government leans conservative.

Meanwhile, parts of the political Left continue to defend Islamist-linked groups, claiming to stand in solidarity with Muslims. But this is not solidarity, it is betrayal. Because the vast majority of Muslims have nothing to do with this extremist ideology, and want no part in this agenda. 

By empowering extremists like Jolani and normalizing those who share his ideology, Western governments are not defending Islam, they are endangering it, by associating it with the very forces that most Muslims themselves reject. 

Let’s not be fooled by branding. Whether HTS, the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other front group, these organizations are united by the same violent, supremacist ideology. They wear different masks, speak to different audiences, and adapt their tone, but their goal is one: the dismantling of secular democracy and the imposition of theocratic rule; an Islamic Caliphate under Sharia Law, stretching from Africa to the Middle East, to Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and every country and city they believe they can dominate as a ‘Muslim majority.’ Their ambitions are global, their ideology totalitarian, and their methods genocidal.

This is not only about their twisted ideology, but also about their scheme, a deliberate, long-term plan to infiltrate, influence, and ultimately transform our institutions, societies, and laws from within.

This entire project—and all organizations that promote it, whether directly affiliated or not—must be banned, combatted, and dismantled. We must clamp down on their networks, expose their propaganda, cut off their funding, and uproot them from every institution they’ve penetrated before the damage becomes irreversible.

If France truly stands for the Republic, for laïcité, and for the dignity of its people, it must make a choice.

Not between right and left.

But between those who defend freedom and those who would destroy it.

You don’t fight extremism by shaking its hand. You fight it by drawing the line, and standing your ground. History will remember who stood for France and who welcomed its enemies through the front door of the Élysée.