Liberation newspaper said that French expert on political Islam, François Bourga, reaffirmed his statements on January 2, which sparked a torrent of responses rejecting them, after he conveyed a press release from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which led to him being accused of “glorifying terrorism.” .
The newspaper explained – in a report written by Simon Blaine – that the academic sparked a torrent of reactions due to the republication of a press statement on the X website, in response to an article in the New York Times about “allegations of rape and violence committed by fighters” from Hamas, considering these assertions “part of an attempt to Zionism to demonize the resistance of the Palestinian people.” The statement called on the American newspaper to “apologise for this professional sin.”
Retired researcher François Borga (75 years old) insisted on providing clarifications in the face of Internet users who criticized his sharing of Hamas’ statement, indicating that this meant adopting what it had done.
He said on the website “Unbridled glorification of terrorism.”
The French academic added, “I realize that there is controversy in the evaluation and that this may be shocking, but I will not move an inch on this issue.”
He explained, “The necessity of acknowledging the existence of a terrorist movement on October 7th will not force me to criminalize a Palestinian liberation movement,” which the newspaper considered a fallacy.
Critics of François Burga see this speech as the culmination of the intellectual path that the researcher took throughout his career, after he affirmed a long time ago that “Islamic violence” does not come from Islam but is a result of the colonial history in which the establishment of the State of Israel occurred.
Although the hypothesis that political Islam is a “reaction to colonial domination” is very far from achieving consensus within the scientific community, as the newspaper says, Borga insists in his books and in the media that “so-called Islamic terrorism is for the most part nothing but counter-violence.” He confirmed this in a video clip posted on YouTube in 2021.
A year earlier, François Borga wrote in Le Monde newspaper that “the goals of the Islamic agenda emanating from the Muslim Brotherhood school are more secular and democratic than religious and dogmatic, as its opponents wish to describe them,” considering himself – according to Libération – “against the tide” of the debate whose merits won. Islamophobia in France.