PARIS, France – French historian of law and sociologist Professor Jean-Louis Harouel believes France and its “religion of human rights” are to blame for the rise of Islam which he said is a political ideology first and a religion second.

Professor Harouel sat down with Breitbart London at his home in Paris to talk about what he calls the “religion of human rights”. To Harouel, human rights, or political correctness, have been transformed into the state religion of France and said laws against free speech were the equivalent of “blasphemy” for the French elites.

“At the end of the 20th century, human rights took the place of Communism,” Harouel said adding that human rights have become, “our last utopia”.

He noted that like Communism, the human rights religion “knows no nations, no countries and no civilisations. You only have individual people throughout the world and any one of these people can go where he wants and take what he wants.”

Harouel blamed the human rights religion for creating a lack of identity amongst people in France and that lack of identity led many Muslims in Paris’s immigrant-populated suburbs to embrace Islam as their identity.

“The human rights religion is very paradoxical because it is mainly aimed against any kind of discrimination,” he said. Howver, he noted that Islam, which he refers to as a political ideology first and a religion second, has managed to remain highly discriminatory against women and others.

Whilst saying that Islam was a “great civilisation” looking at it from the outside, he noted that Muslims were “constructing parts of Islamic civilisation in Europe”.

“Just like Kosovo, maybe one day some part of Islamic civilisation in France, or elsewhere, will ask to be a state,” he warned. “From my point of view, it is a question of conquest.”

French academic and expert on radical Islam Gilles Kepel told Breitbart London last week that education could work to foster a French identity amongst Muslims. Professor Harouel was more sceptical saying: “I have a lot of consideration for Gilles Kepel but I’m afraid it will not work because you can only educate people who want to be educated.”

“Not every Muslim is an Islamist, not every Islamist is a terrorist, but all Islamic terrorists are Muslims,” he added.

“The important thing is that any Muslim present in Europe is well-treated, has perfect freedom of thought, has the freedom to exercise his religion – but he must always be conscious of the fact he is not on Muslim soil, or in a Muslim country.”

Harouel said Switzerland could be the model for France as they have managed to ban minarets and are working on banning the burqa, but have kept in place the freedom for people to follow their religious beliefs.

“From my point of view, that is the main way of educating those people,” he said.

Professor Harouel described newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron as “pleasant” in person but said Macron is also a “very dangerous man in a political way”.

The historian said that in France the Front National and the name Le Pen were heavily “demonised” and going forward there may need to be a new movement or party. A member of the FN said on Sunday the party was considering a “rebranding” which may include a name change.

Calling the mainstream right-wing parties a “soft version of the left”, Harouel said he did not believe there were any traditional right wing parties left in France as the left had dragged them all further to the left over the last few decades.

On the subject of mass migration, Harouel said the problem with countries like Germany and France was that they are “countries of old people” and said the only way to change the demographic shift would be to stop immigration.

He said France should “stop giving money to immigrated people who are not of French nationality and stop giving them money which encourages them to have children”.

Jean-Louis Harouel is Professor Emeritus of Law History at the University Paris Panthéon-Assas and the author of Human Rights Against the People.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart.com