Elias d’Imzalène plays at Owhere is charlie? to La France insoumise. Since the beginning of this year, the long-bearded Islamist influencer has become a fixture at Mélenchonist demonstrations. He was seen on May 30 at the mobilization in front of TF1’s offices against Benjamin Netanyahu’s interview, in close proximity to MPs Louis Boyard, Carlos Martens Bilongo and Thomas Portes. He was heard on March 1 at a round table in support of the Palestinians at the Café de Paris, in the 11th arrondissement of the capital, in the company of MP Ersilia Soudais.
On September 8, he was again in the wake of Thomas Portes and MEP Rima Hassan at a pro-Palestinian rally organized at Place de la Nation in Paris by Urgence Palestine, one of the groups he leads. This time, the founder of the Islam & Info website slipped up on the podium. “Are we ready to lead the intifada in Paris? For our suburbs, in our neighborhoods, to show them that the path to liberation comes from us. Let it start in Paris, let it pass through Marseille!”, he shouted. The Ministry of the Interior reported these comments to the Paris prosecutor’s office; an investigation was opened for public incitement to hatred or violence based on origin, nation, race or religion.
The appearance of such an agitator in the environment of La France insoumise tells the story of the intersecting trajectory of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party and this influencer, who has been on the S list since 2021. “When Mélenchon declares himself in favor of Eastern Christians, when Mélenchon says that our natural allies are the Kurdish fighters who are carrying out ethnic cleansing against Muslim Arabs in Syria, is that compatible with our Islamist vision?”, this activist wondered again in a debate for the media Mizane TV, on February 8, 2022.
Elias d’Imzalène, El Yess Zareli by his real name, has let little personal information leak online. He is said to have been born in the mid-1980s, but his exact age is unknown. He is said to have trained as a lawyer, but his profession and income are unknown. He only lets it be said that he lives in Versailles, in the Yvelines, and that his wife ran an association in favor of wearing the full veil. His Islamist ideas, however, are not in doubt.
Soral “said some interesting things”
In 2011, he founded Islam & Info, a community site, subtitled “News by Muslims, for Muslims”. “He is not a Salafist, as is often written. He is a political activist, an agitator, in vindictiveness against France. He was looking for notability and found it with Islam & Info, which often created a buzz”, explains Bernard Godard, project manager at the religious affairs office of the Ministry of the Interior between 2002 and 2014. “He is a neo-Salafist who can work with the Muslim Brotherhood and, above all, who is involved in society. The only community he recognizes himself in is that of Muslims”, specifies essayist Naëm Bestandji, a specialist in political Islam. In 2022, with Mizane TV, Elias d’Imzalène defined himself as an “Islamist”, an exclusive defender of the Muslim cause. Before landing on the far left, he gravitated in circles close to the far right.
This is how he appeared in 2013 as a participant in a conference on “the clash of civilizations” at the Théâtre de la Main-d’Or, then managed by Dieudonné. “All-powerful lobby: towards a revolt of the forgotten? Zionism, Islam in France, French identity: an obligatory choice?”, describes the site Egalité et Réconciliation, by Alain Soral, promoter of the event. As early as 2011, in messages that have now been deleted, he claims that Alain Soral “said interesting things” and describes Marine Le Pen as a “hysterical Islamophobic Judeophile”, “libertine” and “Zionist”. In December 2015, during a search of his home, the police found a copy of Mein Kampf, of Adolf Hitler.
“Decadence at its peak”
During François Hollande’s five-year term, Elias d’Imzalène threw himself into denouncing “gender theory” in schools, with homophobic overtones. On May 28, 2013, Islam & Info published an angry article against the mention of homosexuality in school curricula. “Farewell to modesty, shyness and polite restraint. […] All this to install decadence in its paroxysm: homoparental families. […] It now seems unthinkable that our children should be educated in such schools. The solution lies in the creation of private schools, independent of these indecent and perverse schemes. It is up to Muslims to give themselves the means to act for future generations,” writes a certain Oum Leyna, presented as a “sociologist in gender and religion.”
A statement that is in line with one of Imzalène’s obsessions: pushing Muslims to organize themselves into a separate counter-society. “Your schools, to which you send your children, in which I was taught to disbelieve, to hate [l’islam]to hate our ancestors, must be abandoned and brought to our schools. […] One day we will have to even think about having our banks, our local currency,” he preached at the Torcy mosque in June 2013. A place of worship administratively closed in April 2017 after its imams were accused of having “legitimized armed jihad,” according to the Interior Ministry. In the intelligence services’ note then sent to the Melun administrative court, Elias d’Imzalène’s activism is among the incriminating evidence. “He provided language comparing the situation in France to apartheid and asking the faithful to stop being legalistic French, republican French and patriotic French,” it is written, according to The Parisian.
Self-proclaimed spokesperson
In January 2014, Islam & Info “supported” the “withdrawal days” organized by Farida Belghoul, then close to Alain Soral, in order to protest against alleged “LGBT propaganda” in national education. But the success of this site is mainly due to its precise monitoring of current events: in the manner of the identity press review Fdesouche, of which it is the counterpart, Islam & Info relays and comments on the media from the unique angle of Islamophobia.
On July 23, 2013, he published a video entitled “Trappes, police, nikab, riot, the media are lying to you, this is what really happened”, viewed more than 700,000 times. Elias d’Imzalène denounces the identity check of a woman in a full veil in the city of Yvelines. A weekend of riots ensued, d’Imzalène improvised himself as a community leader, as he did the following month in Argenteuil (Val-d’Oise), thirty kilometers away, after the assault of a veiled woman, making appointments with the mayor even though he did not even live in the department. In September 2023, he was seen again in Stains, around high school students mobilized against the ban on the abaya. Then, last April, in the crowd at a pro-Palestinian rally in front of Sciences Po. “D’Imzalène is everywhere you can do agit-prop. That’s his modus operandi,” points out Bernard Godard.
In recent years, Elias d’Imzalène seemed to be losing momentum for a while; his site Islam & Info fell into virtual slumber. Since October 2023, he has regained visibility by investing in pro-Palestinian activism. He has become one of the figures of Urgence Palestine, a radical association with which France Insoumise regularly makes common cause. On Mizane TV, in February 2022, he gave one of the reasons for his rapprochement with the Mélenchonist galaxy: the growing influence of the themes of the Party of the Natives of the Republic (PIR), a decolonial movement with a virulent discourse. “We must pay tribute to the work that the Party of the Natives of the Republic has done, to Houria Bouteldja [NDLR : fondatrice du PIR], which made possible a cultural victory within the parties […]who managed to make LFI evolve.” The influencer is also evolving. His infiltration is no longer limited to Islamophobia or even the pro-Palestinian movement: on June 29, he was the man behind Assa Traoré during her speech in Nanterre, on the anniversary of the death of young Nahel, killed by a police officer.
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