The French academic paying a heavy price for probing the Muslim Brotherhood

Loitering by the entrance, I clock a large gentleman with tattoos crawling up his neck from underneath his collar. It’s immediately obvious he’s not there for lunch: he is there on behalf of the French state to prevent an assassination. Specifically, the targeting of the academic I am meeting: Dr. Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, who’s been living under police protection for the last six weeks since the reaction to her book on the Muslim Brotherhood took a turn.

The Muslim Brotherhood is perhaps the most significant Islamist organisation in the world. A political party founded against the backdrop of 20^th century colonialism in Egypt, it arrived in the West via students and exiles fleeing repressive regimes in the Arab world. It is also obsessively secretive. So an anthropologist probing and writing about the group’s activities doesn’t go down well.

The rumblings began before the book was even published. When the book came out in January though, Bergeaud-Blackler, no stranger to sensitive subjects, could not have anticipated the response.