Paris (AFP)

The government said it wanted to "move on" Sunday after the controversy over "Islamo-leftism" at the university caused by remarks by Minister Frédérique Vidal, but the right outbid by denouncing certain "collusions" from the left with Islamism.

EELV MEP Yannick Jadot, for his part, asked for the resignation of the Minister of Higher Education and Research, who announced on Tuesday that he had asked the CNRS "for an assessment of all the research" taking place in France, in order to distinguish between what is academic research and what is activism.

“She must leave. The minister who disqualifies research and higher education in our country cannot remain in office,” Yannick Jadot said on France 3.

He is thus registered in the footsteps of a forum of 600 academics who demanded Saturday in the World the resignation of Ms. Vidal.

The minister for her part challenged, in the Journal du dimanche, wanting to set up a "thought police", assuring on the contrary that she wanted "to deconstruct the idea that there would be a single thought on certain subjects and (.. .) protect the pluralism of ideas at the university ".

"We need an inventory of what is being done in research in France on these subjects" linked to "Islamo-leftism", she reaffirmed.

"It is a political fact", judged on Europe 1-Les Echos-CNEWS the general delegate of LREM Stanislas Guerini.

"I do not know if this has a scientific reality but undoubtedly, we see today that part of the left, more precisely of the extreme left, mixes its voice and converges its ideas with political Islam ".

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal, for his part, hoped during the RTL / LCI / Le Figaro Grand Jury that "we can move on to something else".

Even if "situations call out - plays, conferences are prevented from taking place - should this debate which concerns extremely isolated facts monopolize the entire debate on the university? I do not believe" and "Frédérique Vidal shares it, ”he said.

“The priority is to help students get through the crisis,” added Gabriel Attal.

The right however supported the declarations of the minister on an "Islamo-leftism" which "gangrene the university", the deputy vice-president of the Republicans Guillaume Peltier denouncing on France Inter / franceinfo / Le Monde a "collusion between a part of the left and Islamism ".

"Islamo-leftism is only an emerging face of Islamism, enemy of the Republic," he insisted, citing the example of veiled women on the lists of the New anti-capitalist party.

For the LR president of the Senate Gérard Larcher, "we must stop being in denial" of the phenomenon.

"Does the term Islamo-leftism sum it all up? There are also subjects like decolonialism, racialism. This is totally opposed to the concept of republican universalism."

"That there has been individual complacency, on the right as on the left, with associations that protect a Salafist agenda, is obvious," said Yannick Jadot.

But "Islamo-leftism", "for me it doesn't correspond to anything".

© 2021 AFP