INTERVIEW
Speaking Monday at the National Assembly, at the opening of the parliamentary debate on immigration, Prime Minister Philippe Philippe acknowledged "community drifts" that result in "an insidious secession we do not want." This theme of increasing communitarisation in certain territories is regularly addressed in his books by the political scientist Bernard Rougier, author of a forthcoming book The Conquered Territories of Islamism .
Invited Tuesday of Europe 1, the academic explains that a "Salafist revolution seized of a non-negligible part of the population".
"Over the last twenty years, we have a job of conquering the most vulnerable populations, from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa, religious entrepreneurs who have imposed their concept of Islam," he says. microphone of Matthieu Belliard. These religious networks, "often linked to ideological foci in the Middle East and Maghreb," have "seized power over a significant part of this population," adds the researcher.
A secularism "described as a war machine against Islam"
To carry out this work of conquest, "the idea is to operate a preaching machine that is the mosque, the courses that are given, the sermons", or by "the ecosystem that runs around the hall. sports, halal sandwich shop, pilgrimages to Mecca, etc. ", still describes Bernard Rougier.
This ecosystem, he explains, "will spread conceptions most often out of step with French society", as well as "the idea that French society is disbelieving, that must be freed from its influences" . This logic of self-esteem, adds Bernard Rougier, is "maintained through different religious networks that can compete with each other for the conquest of local territories and spirits (...) but know how to stand together when it comes to denounce secularism, described as a war machine against Islam ".
Returning to the remarks of Édouard Philippe, Bernard Rougier believes that the Prime Minister "recognizes the existence of a problem", while this phenomenon "has existed for twenty years". And the researcher points to "ideological frameworks that come directly from the Middle East, which are rooted in the discourse, the practice", and which assume "in a Salafist revolution". And this "Salafist revolution", he explains again, "has seized a significant part of the population that says it is the main Islam."