Darmanin will meet the author of a controversial book on the Muslim Brotherhood

The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced that he would receive the anthropologist Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, author of a controversial work on the Islamist movement of the Muslim Brotherhood, his entourage announced on Thursday May 11.

The researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) was to present this Friday at the famous Parisian University of the Sorbonne her latest book on the Muslim Brotherhood movement, “The Brotherhood and its networks, the investigation”published in January.

But she announced via Twitter on Tuesday that “the dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Sorbonne had asked for the suspension of her conference for security reasons”. “However, there was no demonstration against the event”she underlined, deploring a “impediment to work and to account for one’s work”.

The postponement of the conference aroused strong reactions in France on Wednesday, while Florence Bergeaud-Blackler had to be placed under police protection after death threats, according to her lawyer.

Threats and “shy support”

The Ministry of Higher Education and Research indicated on Wednesday that Florence Bergeaud-Blackler would be received there. ” shortly “considering “intolerable that academic freedom can be challenged by the slightest threat against it”.

For her part, the researcher interviewed Thursday on Europe 1 denounces the lack of support from the public authorities and the research community: “The ministry and the CNRS tweeted in my defense, but no direct relationship. I did not receive a call either from the Minister of Higher Education and Research, or from the CNRS, or from my laboratory. The support is quite timid”.

According to her, “the University is one of the first targets of Brotherhood entryism”. The postponement of his conference is “a way to accredit the thesis of my critics who accuse me of Islamophobia or racism”.

“Intellectual Islamism”

For the researcher’s lawyer, Me Thibault de Montbrial, “This is exactly where the Islamists want to go, that is to say, to create a climate of insecurity which leads intellectual, media and other authorities to be boycotted for fear of being caught in the turmoil ». According to him, the researcher’s work attracted the wrath of “networks close to intellectual Islamism in France” on social networks.

With a ” snowball effect “ and a multiplication of aggressive messages and threats against his client, then death threats which led to him being placed under police protection, said his lawyer.

“Once again, our universities are victims of censors who impose their ideology by preventing debate”, was indignant for his part the leader of the Republicans Éric Ciotti. MEP LR François-Xavier Bellamy castigated a “revolting addition of compromises and cowardice”.

Founded in 1928 in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood movement carries the project of a conservative political Islam. It is now considered as “terrorist” in Egypt.