Political Islam Is No Longer a Distant Problem

From France to the Triple Frontier, ideological, criminal, and terrorist networks reveal a continuity the West often sees too late.

Studies conducted by the French institute IFOP, a local polling firm founded in 1938, published in April 2026, reveal that 46% of Muslims living in France, including those born in the country, believe that Islamic law, sharia, should be applied in non-Muslim countries.
And, for now, France is not one.
Therefore, it should be considered included in that claim.
The data also show that support for this view is markedly higher among young people.
It should be noted that among those aged 15 to 24, that percentage rises to 59%.
This segment believes that sharia should prevail over French law in matters such as marriage, inheritance, or ritual slaughter, which, incidentally, is permitted in France.
42% of young people sympathize, wholly or partly, with Islamism, that is, the movement that seeks political control in order to impose Islamic law.
Projected across the whole group, the figure falls to 38%.
Finally, 60% of Muslims in France vote for the left.
That may appear contradictory, because the left’s positions on feminism and the so-called “rights agenda” clash head-on with Islamic postulates.
Nevertheless, it may not be so contradictory, because the permissiveness generated by the left has allowed them to enjoy the benefits of the welfare state without much in return.
We may imagine what the fate of those lobbies so dear to socialism might be under sharia.
Italian analyst Alberto de Filippis contextualizes the IFOP report within the current conflict in the Middle East.
The fall of Maduro, he says, did not dismantle the networks that Iran and Hezbollah have built over decades.
It did fragment them, yes, but paradoxically it has forced them to hide, and that makes them harder to detect.
Since the advent of Chávez, Venezuela opened its doors to Iran.
Since 1999, the regime has issued more than ten thousand passports to people from the Middle East, says de Filippis, and it was probably not the only country in Ibero-America to grant such benefits.
Thus, for Iran and its affiliate Hezbollah, Party of God, Venezuela had become a supplier of false identities.
And an ideal base for laundering funds produced by drug trafficking.
Nevertheless, there is one point where Hezbollah has established itself and operates with impunity: the Triple Frontier of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil.
Although it may be presumed that its presence there does not exclude other sites in the region.
An analysis published by the University of La Plata addresses the subject.
It is a document by Belén Geraldine Deriu, an Argentine Master in National Strategic Intelligence, which concludes:
“Hezbollah in the Triple Frontier […] is a subsidiary of Lebanese Hezbollah in the Southern Cone […] its main task and objective is to generate financial resources [and] it is more closely linked to crime than to terrorism itself.”
Of course, terrorism is the instrument within a broader package, and whoever is responsible for financing it is as much a terrorist as the one who plants the bombs.
According to the portal france24.com, in late March 2026 a minor was arrested while attempting to place an explosive device in front of the Bank of America in Paris.
The individual confessed that he had been hired through the messaging application Snapchat and had received 600 euros as payment for his services.
Snapchat has a feature that makes received messages disappear within seconds without leaving a trace.
A mechanism far more sophisticated than the recorded tape that, in “Mission: Impossible,” self-destructed in five seconds and, moreover, is available to everyone.
The case was referred to the anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office.
In 2018, Brazilian police arrested eleven Brazilian citizens linked to ISIS, who were recruiting children for terrorist attacks.
In 2017, UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac revealed that “over the past three years, 117 children were used [by the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram] to carry out bomb attacks,” of whom nearly “80% are girls.”
The euaa.europa.eu page distinguishes the two groups into which Boko Haram split in 2016.
JAS: attacks Muslims who do not support it, and Christians, infidels.
ISIS-WA: only Christians and people who do not abide by Islamic law.
Although these categories are only generalities.
In addition, there is another ethnic group, the Fulani, 98% of whom are Muslim, responsible for the death of 55% of the 16,700 Christians massacred between 2019 and 2023, according to the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa.
In 2024, Fredrik Hallström, head of the Swedish Security Service, told CNN that the criminal gangs Foxtrot and Rumba, which have their operational bases in the Nordic country, act under Iran’s orders in attacks against Israeli targets in Europe.
As can be seen, this terrorism has different variants and faces, but a basic underlying substrate, a subject that deserves separate treatment.

Political Islam.
Transnational networks.
Western security.

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