(Middle East Eye) The new French interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, has declared that he is not ruling out classifying the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist” group and banning it, while advocating for the establishment of a new criminal offence to fight political Islam in the country.
In an interview published on Wednesday by media outlet Valeurs Actuelles, Retailleau said that France was “facing neighbourhoods corrupted by drugs and political Islamism.”
Asked if he could follow the lead of Austria, the first European country to take the step in 2021 to ban the Muslim Brotherhood organisation, Retailleau said that he was “not ruling anything out.”
The Muslim Brotherhood is the world’s largest Sunni Muslim organisation, founded in 1928 by Egyptian Islamic scholar Hassan al-Banna. Despite its transnational charter, its main branch remains in Egypt, where it was banned after the 2013 coup.
