Islamism constitutes an existential threat to France, as the danger now lies within and includes a separatist dimension involving ideological militant coalitions with the far left and anticolonial movements, a bombshell report from lawmakers in France’s National Assembly warns.
There is now a growing awareness in France that the Islamist threat can no longer be understood as exclusively exogenous or reduced to terrorism alone.
Published on December 17, 2025, the 639-page dossier reveals that the French Muslim vote has gravitated heavily to the Left, with a notable preference for La France Insoumise (LFI), a far-left party accused of strategically collaborating with Islamism to gain control over France.
The report responds to a parliamentary resolution by the Republican Right in France’s National Assembly, calling for the creation of “a commission of inquiry to investigate the existing links between representatives of political movements and organizations and networks supporting terrorist action or propagating Islamist ideology.”
The commission states that its investigation focused on a largely undocumented subject—the strategies used by Islamist movements to influence lawmakers and political parties at local and national levels, to subvert the French Republic’s foundational principles.
“Whether it seeks to sow chaos through terrorist acts or to influence public figures to spread its ideology, political Islamism is always characterized by a profound rejection of the values that underpin our society,” the report states.
Local Politicians Collude With Islamist Actors
Links between political leaders and Islamist movements jeopardize the Republic since political Islam aims to impose its vision of religion and society by seeking channels of influence, the commission emphasizes. It highlights convergences and affinities between Leftist politicians, predominantly from the LFI, and radical Islamists.
The dossier warns that Islamist movements will attempt to exert pressure on local officials in the lead-up to upcoming elections. It calls for a ban on candidates who have openly conducted a sectarian campaign by making statements contrary to France’s sovereignty, democracy, or secularism.
While politicians sometimes lack the information needed to assess their collaboration with Islamists, in “very serious cases, elected officials appear alongside individuals openly propagating Islamist ideology—or even condoning terrorist acts—for political gain or due to shared views,” as is the case with certain representatives of far-left parties like the LFI, the report observes.
In some municipalities, Islamist militants appear to have infiltrated municipal councils and influence municipal decision-making. Some local politicians win mayoral elections through “pure clientelism,” as demonstrated by an increase in mosque projects six months before municipal elections.
To demonstrate its alarming claims, the report cites statistics from regions like Seine-Saint-Denis, which has an estimated Muslim population of 800,000 people out of 1.8 million inhabitants (44.4 percent of the population), with 115 or 116 mosques or prayer rooms out of the 243 in the Paris region. In the Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture, Muslims and Jews together represent 370,000 people out of 900,000 in Marseille. “The mere mention of this figure shows the potential electoral significance of the Muslim population of our fellow citizens,” it notes.
Homegrown Threat From Child and Youth Jihadists
The endogenous threat now often emanates from “very young jihadists” born or permanently residing in France. Almost all draw inspiration from the Islamic State and plan to attack symbolic targets linked to national or international events (many Jewish or Israeli), with fairly rudimentary means and methods, most often using bladed weapons, the report specifies.
Around 4,000 jihadists are being monitored by intelligence services. Of these, 70 percent have engaged in violent jihadism since 2023 and are under 21 years old. Of the 1,300 people listed in the terrorism prevention program, some 150 are minors, the youngest being 13 years old.
A growing proportion of the jihadi suspects suffer from psychiatric disorders, the dossier notes. The profile of these suspects corresponds to Gilles Kepel’s theory of “atmospheric jihadism,” in which jihadis act not on orders given by Islamist terror outfits but are “entrepreneurs of anger” who will choose their own targets without belonging to an organization.
Islamist separatism, stemming from Salafist movements, constitutes a significant part of the threat, the report emphasizes. Such forces seek to develop a “progressively indoctrinated counter-society which imposes itself de facto in the public space,” while creating “a society in which the rules of religion would be privileged.”
Twin Strategies: Islamist Separatism and Infiltration
While the Salafis adopt a separatist approach by establishing spaces apart from the national community and turning away from politics, Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood attempt to destabilize the Republic through infiltration and by using “the tools of democratic pluralism against itself,” the lawmakers warned, noting that the line dividing the separatists and those using the strategy of “entryism” has become “quite thin.”
“There is now a growing awareness in France that the Islamist threat can no longer be understood as exclusively exogenous or reduced to terrorism alone,” French anthropologist Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, quoted in the report, told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI). Bergeaud-Blackler, The Muslim Brotherhood and Its Networks: The Investigation, explained that nonphysically violent Islamism manifests itself in two forms within France.
The first, which she describes as “Fraternalist-Salafist,” involves communal withdrawal and seeks to create micro-societies in the heart of cities—particularly in working-class neighborhoods—governed by strict religious norms that separate halal from haram. The other, she said, involves the subversion of norms and culture to make society “Sharia-compatible.” This latter form, associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and directly inspired by Youssef al-Qaradawi, aims to cultivate an Islamic elite that will one day assume the reins of power, relying on a gradual, nonviolent strategy that uses the rule of law and the tools of democratic pluralism to replace democratic values with Islamic ones, she adds.
The dossier complements the report on the Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islamism in France, published by the Ministry of the Interior in March 2025, which identifies the new Islamism in France as rooted in grassroots militant activism, reinforced by a new generation of preachers, predicting that the MB poses a threat to France’s national cohesion—not through violence, but by incrementally eroding secular values at the local level.
