Classrooms to Councils: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Silent Infiltration of French Society

 

Muslim Brotherhood does not use the direct violence in France but aims at the long-term ideological authority. It creates schools, maintains mosques, and controls the regional government in order to change the social norms.In a May 2025 report released by French Interior Ministry, the Brotherhood operates 21 schools that train over 4,200 students, and controls 139 mosques. It has also 68 group-friendly mosques that amount to approximately 7 % of the Muslim places of worship in France. In such institutions, the Brotherhood promotes separation by gender and doctrines that in most instances do not blend with the secularism aspect of France like in the case of Lycce Averroes, Lille. In order to disseminate these ideas the group relies on employing passive methods of ingress (entryism), i.e. infiltrating the city councils and associations virtually unnoticed. This allows it to push at minor steps, like the laws that mandate the wearing of a veil when girls reach the age of five.Despite failure by the government to ascertain any direct linkage between the Brotherhood and the violent plans, it labels the group as subversive yet non-violent, and a danger to national integrity of the activities. The Brotherhood can oscillate between a moderate stance publicly and a tougher stand privately and it is therefore difficult to struggle with. The money of Qatar and Turkey sustains the network and allows it to operate in the civil domain without necessarily engaging in opposition with the state.A response to that has been given by President Macron, in the form of freezing assets, and ending suspect networks which critics assert can amount to stigmatizing the 6 million Muslims in France who are mainly uninvolved with the Brotherhood.The argument is centered on whether the activities Brotherhood is involved in are a threat to the security or a cultural conflict. It is a test of France’s secular identity, and over-bearing responses could make it even deeper divides. How to safeguard republican values without offending French Muslims is the question as Macron government crack down on the finances.