Before this month, French interior minister Gerald Darmanin was best known to football fans for falsely claiming that Liverpool supporters with fake tickets were responsible for the chaotic scenes that overshadowed the 2022 Champions League final at the Stade de France.
Now Darmanin has focused his attention on the sport once again after accusing Karim Benzema of being connected to the Islamist organisation the Muslim Brotherhood, which has prompted the former Real Madrid striker’s lawyer to threaten Darmanin with legal action. It is not the first time that Benzema has found himself targeted by the French political classes. So why has he come under scrutiny this time?
Darmanin launched his opening salvo during a debate about the threat of Islamic fundamentalism on the right-wing French news channel CNews. “As we all know, Mr Benzema has notorious links with the Muslim Brotherhood,” Darmanin said. “We are fighting the hydra that is the Muslim Brotherhood because it creates an ‘atmosphere of jihadism,’” he added, using an expression popularised by the French political scientist Gilles Kepel.
Benzema’s lawyer, Hugues Vigier, reacted furiously to Darmanin’s accusations. “This is false!” he said in a statement. “Karim Benzema has never had the slightest connection with this organisation. Praying for a civilian population (living) under bombs… obviously constitutes neither ‘Hamas propaganda’ nor ‘complicity in terrorism’ nor ‘acts of collaboration’.
“It is, I wish to believe, natural compassion in the face of what many people describe as war crimes being committed in Gaza, but that does not detract from the horror of the terrorist acts of October 7 (committed in southern Israel by Hamas), which cannot be disputed.”
Darmanin appeared to be reacting to a post on X, formerly Twitter, by Benzema the day before in which he had expressed solidarity with the people of Gaza over the war in Israel and Gaza. “All our prayers for the inhabitants of Gaza, victims once again of these unjust bombardments that spare neither women nor children,” the former France international wrote to his 20.9 million followers.
French President Emmanuel Macron voiced strong support for Israel during a diplomatic visit to the country, although he also called for a humanitarian truce and for the Middle East peace process to be resurrected. Darmanin had previously announced a ban on all pro-Palestine rallies in France, which is home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities.
It is the first time that Benzema, who joined Saudi club Al Ittihad last summer from Madrid, has ever been publicly accused of having links with the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational group established in Egypt in 1928 that advocates for societies to be governed according to strict Islamic law. It is banned in a number of Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, which designated it a terrorist organisation in 2014, but that is not the case in most of Europe.
In subsequent media briefings, Darmanin’s office justified his stance by saying that they had noticed “a slow drift in the positions adopted by Karim Benzema towards a hard-line, rigid Islam characteristic of (Muslim) Brotherhood ideology”. The minister’s entourage cited Benzema’s decision not to sing La Marseillaise while representing France and accused him of “proselytising” on social media by sharing posts about aspects of his Muslim faith such as fasting, prayer or the pilgrimage to Mecca.
The same sources rebuked Benzema for having once liked an Instagram post by Russian MMA fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov threatening violence against Macron and for having been photographed with an imam who was investigated by police over the beheading of French school teacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist extremist in October 2020.
French Senator Valérie Boyer seized on Darmanin’s remarks to declare that if Benzema was found to be in league with the Muslim Brotherhood, he should be stripped of both his 2022 Ballon d’Or and his French citizenship. (Despite his Algerian roots, Benzema is only thought to hold French citizenship and it is illegal in French law to make people stateless.) French Member of the European Parliament Nadine Morano, meanwhile, described Benzema as “an element of Hamas propaganda”.
Vigier threatened to sue Darmanin for slander and said that he was also considering taking legal action against Morano for her comments about Benzema being a Hamas propagandist. Undeterred, Darmanin used a subsequent appearance on BFMTV to say that he would withdraw his comments about Benzema if the 35-year-old striker put out a tweet mourning the recent allegedly Islamist murder of teacher Dominique Bernard in the northern French city of Arras. Vigier described Darmanin’s comments as “blackmail”. Darmanin has provided no material proof of a connection between Benzema and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Jerome Rothen, the former Paris Saint-Germain midfielder turned radio host, was highly critical of Darmanin on his RMC Sport show for making allegations without presenting any material evidence.
“If he wants to say what he’s said, he needs to provide proof. If he has no proof, I find it disgusting,” he said. “The French interior minister allowing himself to talk like that about a French citizen… Where are we going? He’s a minister, for f***’s sake! It drives me mad. If he has proof that Karim Benzema is a danger to society, he needs to produce it. And if you have no proof — shut up!”
Benzema, whose father was born in Algeria and whose mother was born to Algerian parents, has faced scrutiny over his attachment to France — the country of his birth — since the earliest years of his football career. Aged 18 and still on the fringes of the Lyon first team, he came in for criticism over a radio interview in which he described Algeria as “my country” and said that he had chosen to represent France at international level “for the sporting side”.
He has nevertheless described playing for France, which he did on 97 occasions prior to his international retirement last year, as “a dream”. He also had to repeatedly answer questions about his choice not to sing the French national anthem before international fixtures (despite the fact that a succession of France greats, including Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane, never sang it either).
Benzema said in 2018 — in an interview with the Spanish edition of Vanity Fair — that he didn’t sing the anthem because it’s a war cry. “If you listen to it properly, La Marseillaise calls for war and I don’t like that.”
In 2013, he pointed to the fact that other French players never sang it and said that people were blowing the issue out of proportion. “I’m not going to score a hat-trick just because I’ve sung La Marseillaise… It’s nothing to do with things I’ve heard — like me not liking the France team. People need to calm down. I really like the France team. It’s a dream for me to play for France… Nobody can force me to sing La Marseillaise. Zidane, for example, didn’t necessarily sing it. And there are others. I don’t see where the problem is. Even some supporters don’t sing it.”
Multiple off-pitch controversies — from accusations that he slept with an underage escort (which were dismissed in court in 2014) to his 2021 conviction for attempting to blackmail France team-mate Mathieu Valbuena over a sex tape — have only served to provide further ammunition to political figures eager to portray the striker as a bad example for French youngsters.
“Benzema has the advantage of being well known to French people, so when you attack him, everyone knows who’s being attacked,” the football historian Francois da Rocha Carneiro told The Athletic.
“He’s talented. He’s occasionally caused problems in the France team. He’s from the banlieues (deprived suburbs), he has roots in a former French colony. And on top of that, he’s a Muslim and he’s proud to be one. He doesn’t hesitate to express his faith, whereas others might hide it. At the end of Ramadan, for example, he’ll be one of the first to wish people ‘Eid Mubarak’ — which he has every right to do. But it’s very easy for them (politicians) to have a pop at him.”
That Benzema finds himself being attacked again has little to do with his solidarity for the people of Gaza and much more to do with the current state of play in French politics. French law obliges Macron to step down as president when his second term in office ends in 2027 and the race to succeed him is already beginning to take shape. Darmanin indicated in an interview with Le Figaro in August that he has his eyes on the top job.
To get there, he must first secure the nomination of his centrist party, Renaissance, and then see off the threat of Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally, who took Macron to a second-round run-off in the presidential election of 2022. The danger posed by Le Pen, who is seen as a strong contender for the presidency in 2027, has convinced would-be candidates from the centre and centre-right that, in order to gain the keys to the Elysee Palace, they must be able to appeal to voters who might be tempted to vote for her. In football terms: it means that everyone is going on the attack down the right.
One of Darmanin’s main rivals within Renaissance (the party formed by Macron in 2016 and initially known as En Marche!) is 34-year-old Gabriel Attal, the fresh-faced education minister, who appeased the party’s conservative wing in August by announcing a ban on the wearing of the abaya, a loose-fitting robe worn by some Muslim women, in French state schools.
Attal said that the move upheld the French state’s commitment to laicite or secularism, which forbids displays of religious symbolism in state-run schools and government buildings. France banned Muslim headscarves from French schools in 2004 and it has been illegal to wear face-covering veils in public since 2010. By the same token, Christian crosses and the Jewish kippah are also banned in schools.
Debates over France’s secular principles have intensified since secondary school teacher Paty was decapitated by a Chechen refugee in the Paris suburbs in 2020 after showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his students during a discussion about secularism. A 20-year-old Russian man of Chechen origin arrested over the fatal stabbing of Bernard — the teacher cited by Darmanin — earlier this month is alleged to have had similar Islamist motivations and the government has since faced criticism for not doing more to root out dangerous extremists living in the country.
Emboldened by Darmanin’s attack on Benzema, far-right politician Eric Zemmour attempted to draw a link between high-profile Muslims such as Benzema and the two teachers’ murders. “What I know is that he’s a Muslim who wants to apply Sharia law — and Sharia law means jihad,” Zemmour said during a television interview on France 2. “Jihad means killing Dominique Bernard and killing Samuel Paty. I make a direct link.” Benzema’s lawyer said that he also intended to sue Zemmour, who has several previous convictions for inciting racial hatred.
Although Le Pen distanced herself from Darmanin’s allegations about Benzema and the Muslim Brotherhood, describing them as a political “diversion”, she accused the player of showing “a clear indulgence in the most radical Islam, which some would call Islamic fundamentalism”.
The political left, on the other hand, has come to Benzema’s defence. Jean-Luc Melenchon, founder of far-left party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), said that the government had chosen to “demonise” Benzema, who he said must be a “remarkable person” to have generated such opprobrium. Melenchon’s colleague, Thomas Portes, accused Darmanin of creating a “racist controversy”. Benzema retired from international football in December 2022 (Alex Gottschalk/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
Darmanin, who has been backed by former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, has made it clear that he wants to appeal to the “popular classes”, meaning working-class voters who are liable to be receptive to the right-wing message of Le Pen. Provocatively targeting Benzema is a way of setting out his stall.
“It was about creating a diversion with regard to the criticism that the government has faced for its inaction over radical Islam and it was also about reaching out to the electorate on the right or the far right,” said Antoine Bristielle, the director of opinion at the Fondation Jean-Jaures thinktank. “In a recent survey, the far right represented 40 per cent of the French electorate — not the classic right, but the far right. Macron’s stance was that he was both on the right and the left, but Darmanin wants to show that he’s on the right and that he can speak to that part of the population. It’s about reaching out to the part of France that has far-right views.”
It was in the mid-1990s that Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father and former president of the Front National (which his daughter rebranded as National Rally), began to target high-profile footballers as a means of forcing his way into the headlines. During Euro 96, he referred to the non-white players in the France squad as “foreigners” and criticised those who chose not to sing La Marseillaise.
When he announced his candidacy for the French presidency in November 2001, he pointedly did so in front of the Stade de France (and like his daughter 20 years later, he would send shivers down the spines of moderate French people by making it to the second round of the following year’s election, before losing to Jacques Chirac).
Nearly three decades on, and in spite of all the success that the multi-ethnic France national team have achieved over the intervening years, French presidential hopefuls are again attacking footballers for political capital.