Karim Benzema finds himself caught in the vortex of a storm, a political cyclone with considerable potential for development. Because of a tweet to his almost 21 million followers. On October 15, Benzema wrote the following sentence on If he had also included in his prayers the women and children who were killed in Israel by Hamas a week earlier, on October 7th, then no one would have said anything. But these victims were missing.
And so this tweet also stood out in the world. The initial criticism of this was nevertheless quiet; there were no hashtags in Benzema’s post, no direct political keywords, no “Free Palestine”, for example. But then France’s Interior Minister came forward and the Benzema case suddenly grew into a medium-sized state affair. Gérald Darmanin said during an appearance on the right-wing news channel CNews that Benzema had “a notorious connection to the Muslim Brotherhood.” This is a serious accusation: the internationally active, Islamist movement is considered terrorist in some countries, including Saudi Arabia, where Benzema has been playing club football since this summer.
When the French media asked the minister’s office how they could prove his alleged closeness to the Muslim Brotherhood, it was said that Benzema had been observing for some time a “slow drift towards a hard, strict Islam, as one would expect from the ideology of the Brotherhood knows”. This is also reflected in his social media profiles, the newspaper’s employees said Le Parisien: in his likes, his photos. In one post, Benzema was seen with a controversial imam from a Parisian banlieue who the police had questioned three years ago on suspicion in connection with the murder of history teacher Samuel Paty. Another indication of Benzema’s personal development in the ministry is the fact that the striker did not want to sing the French national anthem when he played for the national team. However, Benzema is not alone in this – and even as a young man he was not involved Marseillaise tuned in. In his case that was always an issue.
The 35-year-old from Lyon is used to dividing opinions, especially at home in France. Not so much for what he achieves on the football pitch, after all he is undisputedly one of the best French footballers of the last decade. He played for Real Madrid for 14 years until his move to the Saudi desert. For France Football Karim Benzema was even the best footballer in the world in 2022, and the magazine awarded him the Ballon d’Or for this. Nothing more is possible in this sport, at least individually.
A big storm hits Benzema
If he was denied the collective love of the French despite this glory, despite 97 international matches, it was because of his smug attitude – and because of an incident beyond decency and law: two years ago, Benzema was given a conditional prison sentence of one year and one Fined 75,000 euros for allegedly belonging to a gang that wanted to blackmail fellow footballer Mathieu Valbuena with a sex video. A very unpleasant affair that cost Benzema a long banishment from the national team. National coach Didier Deschamps didn’t call on him for years.
But the storm that has now hit him is even bigger. A senator from the right-wing Républicains says that if what the Interior Minister says about the connection to the Muslim Brotherhood is true, then Benzema, who is an important influencer, should not only be taken away from the Ballon d’Or, but also from his French citizenship . Benzema is a French-Algerian dual citizen, and his parents are also French – so you can’t take away his citizenship. A right-wing MEP described Benzema as a “propagandist for Hamas”, and a famous advertiser called him an “accomplice of the terrorists”.
Benzema now says through his lawyer, Hugues Vigier, that he is shocked and that all the allegations are false. “Karim didn’t even know the Muslim Brotherhood,” Vigier said. These comments about his client are “sickening” and French politicians are once again harnessing Benzema to their own ends. The usual Benzema bashing? The possibility of filing a defamation lawsuit against the Interior Minister is now being examined.
When Benzema was once asked why he… Marseillaise didn’t sing, he said: “Whoever feels like singing it, let him sing it.” He doesn’t like the anthem: “It calls for war.”