Islam-Critical Academics Hounded into Silence in France with Help from a Complicit Left   

Less than a fortnight after Emmanuel Macron downplayed the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood and suggested an official report on Islamist infiltration could result in “conspiracy theories or paranoia,” a major report has shone a light on the “professional denigration” and “moral harassment” of French academics working on Islamism—as well as the “physical threats” directed towards them.

French daily Le Figaro has highlighted in particular the case of Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, an anthropologist whose 2023 book on the Muslim Brotherhood resulted in her being placed under police protection because of death threats “from dangerous individuals, including Islamists.” Two years later, Bergeaud-Blackler is still under police protection.

One ‘expert’ told the paper that the anthropologist simply “put her foot in it and took all the flak.” But, journalist Jean Chichizola notes, this problem is far from being limited to France—never mind to Bergeaud-Blackler.

In France and abroad, other experts on Islamism, or the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, are confronted with this same mixture of denigration and threats.

Bergeaud-Blackler herself added that “all researchers working on Islamism in Europe are insulted, defamed and threatened (non-stop).”

But as well as spending years denying the threat posed—as the French government report put it, to protect “national cohesion”—by the Muslim Brotherhood, establishment figures have also been accused of aiding this attempted suppression of academic discussion on Islamism.

Jean-Marc Chipot, delegate of the liberal right-wing French party Nouvelle Énergie,  argued that while the Left “should be out in the streets denouncing these intolerable threats,” it has instead “chosen collaboration.”

Its responsibility is immense.