Jean-Michel Blanquer flies to the aid of Frédérique Vidal.
According to the Minister of National Education, “Islamo-leftism” is an “unmistakable social fact” that must be “looked in the face”, as he declared on Saturday, while his colleague Minister of 'Higher education has been widely criticized for asking the CNRS to investigate the subject within the university.
“It would be absurd not to want to study a social fact.
If it's an illusion, you have to study the illusion and see if it is.
For my part, I see it as an unmistakable social fact ", affirmed Jean-Michel Blanquer on BFMTV, estimating that" some still try to minimize this political project ".
"It is a phenomenon that must be looked in the face", underlined the Minister of Education, citing the examples of "single-sex" workshops organized by the Sud Education 93 union in 2017 and the interruption of a representation of the ancient poet Aeschylus, interrupted "by activists" in 2019 at the Sorbonne.
"Mélenchon falls into Islamo-leftism without a doubt"
These remarks come as the CNRS affirmed this week that the term "Islamo-leftism" does not correspond "to any scientific reality", while the Minister of Higher Education and Research Frédérique Vidal had requested "a report of all research ”which takes place in France, in order to distinguish between what is academic research and what is activism.
"It is a word which does not necessarily have a scientific content" but "describes a political reality", judged Jean-Michel Blanquer, adding that it was "a very global term".
"I am willing after political scientists analyze this or find other words to describe the phenomenon," he insisted.
According to the Minister of Education, Islamist "extremists" "sometimes find accomplices in certain extreme left circles".
“When you have Jean-Luc Mélenchon who participates in a demonstration of the CCIF, Collective against Islamophobia in France, (in November 2019 in Paris, Editor's note), where there were radical Islamists, Mr. Mélenchon falls into Islamo- leftism without a doubt, ”he said.