Behind the National School of Imams, what networks?

Yves Mamou is a journalist. He is notably the author of the book Le Grand abandon. French elites and Islamism (L'Artilleur, 2018).

LREM deputies presented, on February 25, their lines of work against "Islamist separatism", to use the "elements of language" that Emmanuel Macron promotes today on the subject.

Among their recommendations, the deputies suggested the creation of a training center for imams like the national school of Muslim theology. Of course, the state will not itself produce secular Muslim theology, nor will it itself train republican professionals in Islamic preaching. This would be contrary to the 1905 law. But President Emmanuel Macron demanded that the French Council for Muslim Worship (CFCM) act in its place. In his speech in Mulhouse on February 18, the President of the Republic almost summoned the CFCM to "take responsibility and formulate rapid and clear proposals to ensure the exercise in France of an Islam of which all practices must comply the laws of the Republic ”.

A strange injunction than that of Emmanuel Macron. The CFCM, invented by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2003, is a structure with a weak political record over the period 2003-2020. This CFCM, which is presented as the French-French leader of this future "Islam of France", is not completely immune to the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamist brotherhood, which has no tradition on the French soil, which veils Muslim women wherever it settles, which practices terrorism when it advances its plans and which is prohibited everywhere in the Middle East except in Qatar and Gaza.

We see here the inextricable situation in which France - and political thought - find themselves.

The denunciation by Emmanuel Macron, in Mulhouse, of Islamist "separatism", as well as the hypothesis of the creation of a school for imams, in reality marks the mutation of a system known as Eurabia. It is under this term that the British historian Bat Ye'or analyzed the “Euro-Arab Dialogue” (DEA), a process of quasi-fusion between Arab and European countries. From the end of the 1960s to today, in exchange for hydrocarbons, markets for industrialists and protection against terrorism (Palestinian and / or Islamist), Europe agreed to open up to ever more Muslim immigration, with ever more concessions on the use of the Arabic language in France, with more and more mosques, with more and more itinerant imams, teachers of delegated Arabs who do not speak French, and, in short, ever less integration of Muslim migrants.

The Mulhouse speech is in this sense a historic speech. It does not mark the end of Muslim immigration, but the end of a dream: that of a "soft" fusion between the two sides of the Mediterranean and especially the end of the remote management of Turkish, Algerian immigrants, Moroccans… by the governments of the countries of origin. In Mulhouse, Emmanuel Macron was very clear: no more itinerant foreign imams during Ramadan! No more foreign Arabic teachers as part of ELCO (Teaching in languages ​​and cultures of foreign origin)! And no more funding for dubious foreign mosques!

But Emmanuel Macron's "fight against Islamic separatism" is not as "republican" as it seems. In Mulhouse, Emmanuel Macron did not launch a vast citizen reintegration operation for French Muslims.

The president only announced that he was appointing another tutor for French Muslims. The Arab countries of origin no longer fulfilling their function, France ordered the CFCM and the AMIF (Muslim Association for Islam of France) to "do the job" in place of the governments of origin. The Association for Islam of France (AMIF) which Hakim el Karoui directs will therefore cooperate with the CFCM. How? We do not yet know very well.

One thing is certain: they will not lack means.

Thanks to a tax on halal, thanks to the centralization of donations from the faithful and thanks to a monopoly to be set up on the organization of trips to Mecca, AMIF will draw a few hundred million euros from the pockets of French Muslims. This money will be used for the training of "republican" imams and the construction of mosques.

But the operation will be much larger. To these hundreds of millions drawn from the pocket of Muslims, will be added other hundreds of millions drawn from the pocket of non-Muslims: subsidies to associations in sensitive neighborhoods, jobs almost reserved for "young people" in the suburbs, new credits for city ​​policy… will be entrusted to AMIF and CFCM with the risk of seeing the Brothers take advantage of it to expand their power. To work, to live, to go to Mecca, should the Brothers be the Muslims to address? To breathe, is it to the Brothers that French Muslims will have to ask for authorization?