An imam historically close to the Muslim Brotherhood in France becomes treasurer of an association promoting secularism…. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. The imam’s name is Mohsen Ngazou and he was born in Tunisia. As for the association, it is the Vigie de la Laïcité, whose chairman is the former socialist minister Jean-Louis Bianco, and given the circumstances in which it was founded, one can at least say that it should be particularly attentive to attempts at entrism. Jean-Louis Bianco and the personalities who have joined the Vigie denounce a “secular fundamentalism” that would “play into the hands of the extreme right” and place all Muslims and, through them, all people with an Arab and African migrant background, under suspicion.
Jean-Louis Bianco, less than a week after the dissolution, announced the creation of an association, the Vigie de la Laïcité, together with the former general rapporteur of the Observatory, Nicolas Cadène. The founding members of the new body include the sociologist and religious scholar Jean Baubérot, Radia Bakkouch, then president of the association Coexister , and Jean-Marc Schiappa, father of the minister Marlène Schiappa , who was pulling the strings at the time of the dissolution of the Observatory for Laïcité. The new organisation, which will soon celebrate its two-year anniversary, lacks for nothing.
We have not replaced the information centre,” says Jean-Louis Bianco. We have much fewer resources and, above all, we no longer have an interministerial coordination function.” The organisation has local branches in the departments of Hérault, Gironde, Vendée and Bouches-du-Rhône. They work with schools, the Ligue de l’enseignement and the local chapters of the Ligue des droits de l’homme. The Vendée branch is even mandated by the state to oversee the network of trainers of secularity officers.
However, the profile of the deputy treasurer of Vigie de la Laïcité 13 in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône holds some unpleasant surprises. Mohsen Ngazou is also an imam and head of the Collège-Lycée Ibn-Khaldoun in Marseille, which has had a contract with the state since 2015. An institution that is “impeccable in terms of respect for secularism”, explains a source in the rectorate. The mayor of Marseille, the socialist Benoît Payan, visited it on April 5, 2023.
Mohsen Ngazou has also been chairman of Musulmans de France since 2021, an organisation that has replaced the former Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF) and is “in the Muslim Brotherhood movement”, as Mohsen Ngazou himself puts it in his blog. The Muslim Brotherhood’s goal has always been clear. Its long-term goal – which is completely incompatible with secularism – is the Islamisation of society and the application of Sharia law. Non-violent, to be sure, but uncompromising. Mohsen Ngazou has the merit of speaking plainly in this regard. In his blog, he calls the 2004 law banning ostentatious religious symbols in schools “abhorrent”.
On another page, he calls for “the ideals of our teachers to continue in the manner of a Tariq Ramadan”. In texts seen by Le Point, he cites as his absolute reference Imam Hassan el-Banna, who wrote the “50 Demands of the Muslim Brotherhood Programme” in 1936. These directives call for “prohibiting the mixing of male and female students”, treating any attempt at flirtation “as a punishable crime”, banning dancing and eradicating all Western influence in households. […] Le Point