The French university has long been under the strong influence of what one may call ‘Islamo-leftism,’ i.e., the complacency of a part of the academic elite towards militant Islam, preventing any critical distance and any analysis of the Muslim religion and world. A researcher has just paid the price, seeing her planned conference at the Sorbonne on the Muslim Brotherhood ‘suspended,’ supposedly for security reasons.
A conference by Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, a researcher at the prestigious Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), was scheduled for May 12th at the Sorbonne for her book on the Muslim Brotherhood, entitled Le frérisme et ses réseaux : l’enquête, (Muslim Brotherhood and its networks: an investigation) published in January by editor Odile Jacob. On May 9th, the researcher received a notice from the dean of the Sorbonne’s Faculty of Letters, informing her that the conference had to be ‘suspended’ for security reasons. The person in charge did not even bother to make a phone call to inform the speaker personally.
Florence Bergeaud-Blackler is rightly offended by this, especially as all the arrangements had been made to avoid any possible outbursts, as she explained to the weekly Marianne: “The organisers had chosen to hold it in the evening at 6pm, to avoid the conference being disturbed by students. The audience was older, larger and more knowledgeable than usual.”
These precautions were taken because since the publication of her book, the researcher has been the subject of a cabal on social networks, and even death threats. 800 personalities from the intellectual and research world have given her their support in an open letter. They denounce the perverse mechanisms of research on Islam, which is parasitized by the Muslim Brotherhood. The document reads:
“Florence Bergeaud-Blackler is insufficiently supported by human and social science laboratories, which avoid dealing with Brotherism, which can quietly deploy its research and its vision of the world—what the anthropologist calls “Islamisation of knowledge.” Despite these difficulties, she has been able to analyse the origins, organisation, systemic structure, actors and sources of financing in Europe, particularly from the European Union. The latter provides tens of millions of euros to the Brotherist NGOs and their numerous fronts, diverting funds from studies on racism, Islam and Islamism in Europe to the study of the captious theory of Islamophobia.”
For the researcher, the explanation for the Sorbonne’s attitude is to be found in a generalised resignation of the academic world in the face of cancel culture: “The reality is that there is a very strong rise of cancel culture in all faculties. The Sorbonne has denied its values—its influence—by refusing to organise the conference.”
Following the cancellation, Rassemblement National deputy Roger Chudeau, in charge of educational issues within the national right-wing party, invited Florence Bergeaud-Blackler to come and give her conference in the National Assembly. The Sorbonne responded curtly on Twitter that the conference was not “cancelled,” but only “postponed” to June 2nd.
Florence Bergeaud-Blackler believes that she is not in a position to do her job properly, even though she belongs to a state organisation specialising in research and is asking to be seen by the minister for higher education and research Sylvie Retailleau, who has not yet given an opinion on the postponement of the conference. In 2021, one of her predecessors, Minister Frédérique Vidal, had tried to denounce the influence of Islamo-leftism in French universities, but only succeeded in provoking an outcry in the media.
