La France Insoumise’s Victory in Roubaix: Why the islamist“Brood Parasitism"(cuckoo’s) Strategy Will Backfire on LFI
Source : Le Figaro – 25 March 2026 – No. 25372 – Champs libres / Debates
In Roubaix, a member of parliament from La France insoumise (LFI) has just been elected with 55% of the vote, carried largely by the Muslim community’s vote. This result is the culmination of two dynamics: on one hand, a clientelism practised by all traditional parties, which vied with one another in gestures of deference toward Islam to court a “Muslim vote”; on the other, the deliberate strategy of LFI, the only party to have turned the communitarian vote of the “new France” into a political lever. In the end, nearly all parties helped create the conditions for the success of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “cuckoo” strategy.
In the Nord department – in Roubaix, Tourcoing, Denain, and Maubeuge – no candidate can reasonably hope to win while ignoring the Muslim electorate, whose vote is concentrated on a small number of lists. With a poverty rate of 43% among 95,000 inhabitants (the 4th poorest city in France as of 2018), a border proximity with Belgium that facilitates trafficking, Roubaix has shifted in less than three decades from the status of an economically devastated area to that of a territory of Islamist proselytism. This territory, conquered by Islamism, is crisscrossed by three competing Islamist currents that saturate the religious space: a Muslim Brotherhood pole, a jihadist pole, and a Turkish Islamo-nationalist pole.
The Bilal mosque (Muslim association of Épeule) constitutes the historic heart of the Muslim Brotherhood network in Roubaix, which is now producing its third re-Islamised generation. The Ar-Rahma mosque (or Mosque of Mercy) constitutes a “Brotherhood-Salafist” pole where Abdelmonaim Boussenna preaches, combining Salafist orthopraxy, local engagement, and digital outreach, in the manner of other celebrity imams of the second generation, such as Nader Abou Anas or Rachid Eljay. Boussenna had attracted attention in 2016 for promoting a brand that sells burkinis designed for girls as young as seven. These activities are supported by Amar Lasfar, former president of the Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF), now renamed Musulmans de France (Muslims of France), the historic channel of the Muslim Brotherhood in France, head of the Ligue islamique du Nord, and active supporter of France’s first Islamic secondary school, the Lycée Averroès.
It was in the Dawa mosque, in contact with Islamist militants from the Maghreb and the Near East, that the first Salafist-jihadist networks of Roubaix’s second Islamist pole were formed, linked to Belgium. The “Roubaix gang,” neutralised by the Raid in 1996, was affiliated with al-Qaeda and combined Salafism with serious organised crime. Finally, the third Islamist pole is organised around the Eyyub Sultan mosque, administered by the Franco-Turkish Association of Roubaix, which relays Erdogan’s propaganda on social media. The Ditib, a Turkish religious body that was once secular, has been taken over by the Islamists of Milli Görüs, from which Erdogan emerged. Around this Turkish nucleus gravitate pilgrimage agencies, Islamic bookshops, ritual funeral services, and commerce. This halal ecosystem allows the individual living in this territory never to have to leave it.
It is the conjunction of these factors – an Islamic field structured by competing Islamist currents, a high rate of inactivity, and a significant demographic weight – that makes the Muslim vote decisive.
Clientelism is admittedly a normal feature of democracy: one must offer voters what they demand. But to secure their election, officials must always do more, because the deal is never enough. It is not only necessary to allocate land for mosques and attend iftars, but also to send positive signals and avoid the accusation of Islamophobia, so easily levelled, by acknowledging the benefits of the Islamic presence. After terrorist attacks implicating Muslims, one must absorb the damage, and furthermore demonstrate that Islam has nothing to do with it – and that it is sometimes even the solution… The reaction of Roubaix’s PS mayor René Vandierendonck after the dismantlement of the Roubaix gang was to recognise the city’s seven mosques as centres of socialisation, even though some of those mosques had nurtured an active terrorist breeding ground.
On the blog of Mohamed Louizi, a well-informed observer of Islamist networks, the Roubaix native has catalogued – photos included – candidates from all parties doing their electoral canvassing in 2020. One sees Guillaume Delbar, the LR mayor of Roubaix, breaking the fast at the Eyyub Sultan mosque. One sees the PS mayor of Denain, Anne-Lise Dufour Tonini, denying that the Iquioussen clan, which supports her, belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood. One sees Michel David, former deputy director general of the Roubaix city administration – according to whom “Tariq Ramadan participates in his own way ‘in the social development of young Muslims’ and is closer to a ‘Christian Democrat’ than to a ‘jihadist extremist’” – offering him “the finest hall in Roubaix.” One sees Violette Spillebout, LREM candidate in Lille, posting on social media: “Inch Allah, I’m going to win.” And many other examples.
But all these gestures share one thing in common: they are surrounded by denials. The LR candidate swears he is merely “meeting his constituents.” The PS mayor “doesn’t see the problem.” The LREM candidate claims to be joking. Each one courts the Muslim electorate while pretending otherwise.
So what does the courted Muslim voter conclude? That they are not sincere. He perceives quite quickly the difference between the politician who visits a mosque the day before the election and the one who marches at the head of a demonstration against Islamophobia; between the one who “goes along with the movement” in secret and the one who makes it a public cause. In this logic of escalation, the winner is the one who openly assumes the alliance with Islam, as represented by its Islamist leaders. The party that has done more than any other to make the strategic choice of fully and publicly embracing this communitarian alliance is La France insoumise.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon chose to go on the offensive on 10 November 2019, by marching at the head of the “march against Islamophobia” organised by the Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France (CCIF). His declaration at the Toulouse rally for working-class neighbourhoods left no doubt: “We are at the dawn of a new civilisation to be created. We are the new France. This country belongs to us – it is up to you to make it your own.” In Roubaix, the new mayor, David Guiraud, achieved excellent scores, because his proximity to the mosques and his antisemitic remarks made him a candidate perceived by a growing segment of the community as one of their own. After 7 October in particular, the Palestinian cause activated a bond of identification between Muslims as a minority and Palestinian children. This identification with the “children of Gaza” – a theme imported as early as the 1980s by the Muslim Brotherhood, who broadcast on loop from their large VHS tapes images of dead Palestinian children – has aroused a feeling of bitterness and anxiety among three generations of European Muslims. The sense of being victims of a “structural Islamophobia” comes from Muslim Brotherhood propaganda, which claims that European countries intend to inflict upon Muslims what was done to the Jews during the Shoah. In this context, the LFI vote, which draws on this fear, appears protective and just.
The municipal elections of March 2026 are the time of the first harvest. LFI has indeed won the wager of openness. But at what price? It will be, like the others, at its own expense. For the Muslim Brotherhood has adopted the strategy of “brood parasitism” or the “cuckoo strategy.” Building a theocratic Islamist political party – that is their project – takes time and energy. By infiltrating the nests of other political parties, by having their eggs incubated by structures already built, already funded, already legitimised, they develop sheltered from all criticism, using the accusation of Islamophobia, relayed by the host party, against any opponent. Yet the Muslim Brotherhood has nothing in common with this left wing, which is for them merely a vehicle, and whose words they borrow – “revolution” to describe the intifada, “resistance” to characterise Hamas and attract the support of its allies.
However, some warning signs have emerged even within LFI’s ranks: Mathilde Panot finds herself referred back to her origins; militants no longer tolerate that Islamist demands around halal or the veil take precedence over socio-economic priorities, and they revolt. The LFI incubator will have to contend with all the demands of these cuckoos, larger and more voracious than the native chicks, who have no affinity with its programme but use it to access power – like Mamdani in New York, passing himself off as a communist.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon did not create the problem. He exploited it with remarkable strategic cynicism. And some of those who today decry Mélenchon’s communitarianism would do well to remember their own responsibilities. In order not to be seen making the bed of the far right, they made the nest of LFI. But in the long run, no one will be the winner. In these municipalities won through the Muslim vote, LFI will not be able to escape its fate: being nothing more than the nest of a brood that is not its own.
Florence Bergeaud-Blackler
Doctor in Anthropology and President of the European Centre for Research and Information on Islamism (Cerif), Florence Bergeaud-Blackler has notably published “Le Frérisme et ses réseaux. L’enquête” [The Muslim Brotherhood Movement and Its Networks: The Investigation] (Odile Jacob, 2023).