MIVILUDES

The anti-cult government agency MIVILUDES (Mission Interministérielle de Vigilance et de Lutte contre les Dérives Sectaires) received another 'slap in the face' from none other than its home court, the Paris Administrative Court, which certified MIVILUDES' malfeasance in packaging and spreading false news on religious minorities - in this case, the Jehovah's Witnesses - contemptuously describing them as 'cults' and attributing to them deviant sectarian behaviours that (...)

The outcry over the new French law that has established the crime of "psychological submission" aimed at "strengthening the fight against sectarian drifts" and, from bad to worse, the crime of incitement to refuse treatment or the adherence to unconventional practices, is not fading. But the most attentive have not missed the fact that the new crime seriously endangers freedom of religion or belief, an old target of French laicity. Also because in all of this there is the unwieldy hand of MIVILUDES. 

Under the pretext that the number of "saisines" (dubious and controversial reports) received by the MIVILUDES was increasing, on November 15, 2023, Sabrina Agresti-Roubache, Minister Delegate for Citizenship and Urban Development in the French government and MIVILUDES superintendent, presented a bill to "strengthen the fight against cultic deviances." Today, thanks to an article in The European Times^® NEWS (reproduced below) signed by Willy Fautré, director o

"Approving that law would be a mistake for France," wrote Fabrizio d'Agostini, FOB's scientific advisor and founding member, regarding the bill to strengthen the fight against sectarian deviance that the French government approved despite the Senate's contrary opinion. "The history of France, but also of humanity, is 'chock-full' of similar laws, sometimes less refined, sometimes more brutal, mostly against religious minorities but not only and they have always been bloody stories of death, pain, suffering. They still are."

In the 17^th century Neapolitan philosopher Giambattista Vico illustrated how we have witnessed a turn over of moments of civilisation and moments of barbarism. France, evidently in the grip of a moment of barbarism, is once again proposing a law to strike down the so-called "sectarian drifts", to stifle any thought not aligned with the single thought so much in vogue today.

In 2001, France enacted the infamous anti-cult About-Picard law. Now, 22 years later, the French Minister Sabrina Agresti Roubache, who oversees the anti-cult agency MIVILUDES, is trying to change the About-Picard law for the worse.

France, even more than Germany, has always been the European country that has made intolerance toward religions almost a national sport. Article 2 of the French constitution consists of the famous motto liberté, egalité, fraternité. The current constitution dates back to 1958, and the above motto traces back to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens.

By Jean-Luc Maxence — It was after publishing the article "Rebelles et fake news" that the association CAPLC (Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience) contacted us, and sent us a letter that had been sent to them by the current President of Miviludes (Mission Interministérielle de Vigilance et de Lutte contre les Dérives Sectaires), in response to questions that had been posed to the President concerning the sources of the figures announced by the services of the Ministry of the Interior in connection with the "reinforcement of Miviludes".

by Massimo Introvigne — After Suzanne Privat’s book, another journalist, Nicolas Jacquard of Le Parisien, has published a book on the French Christian community of Jansenist origin known as “La Famille” (Les inspirés, Paris: Robert Laffont, 2021). This book is much more ambitious than the one by Privat, the author having performed a considerable amount of work in reading academic sources on the Jansenist ancestors of La Famille. He is also to be thanked for having raised several questions that were not addressed in the previous literature on this little-known subject. The book remains, however, the investigation of a journalist, which is by definition something other than an academic study, and of a French journalist. This means that he shares a certain negative attitude typical of French society, politics, and the media regarding groups described as “cults” or at least suspected of “cultic deviances” (dérives sectaires). This attitude also leads to privilege information coming from “apostates.”

by Massimo Introvigne — In a previous article reviewing the recently published report for the years 2018–2020 of the French MIVILUDES, the French Inter-ministerial mission for monitoring and combating cultic deviances (dérives sectaires), I noted how it suffers from a fundamental methodological problem. The report is a building built using as bricks the saisines, i.e., the complaints against a religious movement that everybody can send to the MIVILUDES by letter or by using an online form. For pages and pages, the report summarizes and quotes the saisines. There is no indication that the saisines have been verified by confronting them with the existing scholarly literature on the accused religious movements, or by interviewing members in good standing of the religious organizations, who may have a totally different point of view.

by Massimo Introvigne — The MIVILUDES, the French Inter-ministerial mission for monitoring and combating cultic deviances (dérives sectaires), which is now part of the Ministry of the Interior, published last week its report for the years 2018-2020. Like Diogenes wandering with his lantern in search of an honest man, the MIVILUDES wanders around France with the anti-cult ideology as its lantern looking for dishonest “cultic deviances.” Dérives sectaires is a quintessentially French formula and invention, of which MIVILUDES is no less proud than of the Tour Eiffel. It comes out handy to find “cultic” dangers even where no “cult” (which should be translated into French with the corresponding derogatory word, secte) exists.

by Massimo Introvigne — Considering how the French governmental mission against “cultic deviances” is routinely denounced by leading NGOs specialized in religious liberty and by governments, including the United States’, which publish reports on international freedom of religion or belief, the claim by its former president and member of its new Guidance Council, Georges Fenech, in an interview of May 20, that “all the world envies us [France] for the MIVILUDES” may appear just as an exercise in typical French dark humor.

The French government, in the person of its minister Marlene Schiappa, took a very questionable decision by choosing to increase funding to the "anti-religious police", the controversial ministerial mission called MIVILUDES, now under the ministry of the Interior. Bribing this anti-religious body with French taxpayers' money means directly funding the infamous FECRIS (European Federation of Centres of Research and Information on Cults), which has always been financed largely by MIVILUDES. Let us remember that FECRIS, through its federated micro associations scattered as metastases in dozens of European and non-European countries, has been trying for decades to negatively influence the policies of the governments of these countries with regard to freedom of religion and belief.

During the program "Dimanche en politique" Marlène Schiappa, Minister Delegate at the Minister of the Interior, in charge of Citizenship, declared that "More and more families influenced by Evangelical branches from the United States are asking for certificates of virginity".^[1]