The risks of the Muslim Brotherhood in creating parallel societies within Europe has become a haven for the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters and sympathizers, and the group has expanded its ambitions and agenda on European by recruiting various human and financial elements in order to create parallel societies inside European.

Its activities have been consolidated and expanded in Europe through many institutions and centers and received support from states, like Qatar and Turkey, the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar, by its financial and political support for the “MB" project, aims to reproduce the extremist proposals of Hassan Al-Banna, Qaradawi and other “MB“leaders.

According to French intelligence reports, Qatar is mainly involved in supporting terrorists of "MOJWA".in northern Mali. It also reported that Qatar played an important role by training Numbers of French nationality fighters in Libya since 2011 as well as, recruiting and training fighters from North Africa countries with European citizenship who were deported from Syria to through Turkey. <1>

Brotherhood is a religious-political movement

France

The “MB”is a religious-political movement, whose stated aim is to replace Western legal systems with their version of Sharia - a version far more brutal than their version in the region. One of their founding principles is the establishment of a global caliphate with a single supreme political and religious leader. 

Terrorism, and especially radical Islamist terrorism, remains a potent threat across the continent. Countries such as France are also waking up to the threat. In 2020, the French government relaunched its “comprehensive security” legislation to fight Islamic Radical groups. It is working seriously a ban on the organization inside country – a move which would be long overdue

Earlier, Macron revealed a plan to fight what he described as “Islamist Separatism,” which will be presented as a bill to the cabinet on Dec. 9 before making its way to the National Assembly and the Senate

French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed on January 19, 2019 that he looks forward to cooperating with Al-Azhar to enhance the values ​​of citizenship, coexistence and stability in French society and to confront the extremist currents that attract Muslim youth in France, according to Al-Arabiya, and that he wishes that “all French imams and preachers receive their training inside -France. <2>

Germany

The Organization of Islamic Assembly in Germany is one of the oldest and largest Brotherhood organizations there, with about 1,300 members, who seek to establish an Islamic state. Another important Brotherhood affiliate is the Islamic Community of Germany (ICG).

The Germans have become aware, especially since the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS), of the Brotherhood’s effort to reposition itself as a non-threatening alternative to the jihadists like ISIS and Al-Qaeda—and German intelligence is also well-aware of the problems that the Brotherhood in reality poses to society. In the case of ICG, for example, the leaders pay lip service to moderation, while privately supporting the transformation of Germany into an Islamic state “in the medium term,” German journalist Axel Spilcker  German magazine, The Focus.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV)  exerting ever-greater control over the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (ZMD), which in turn collaborated with the Cologne-based DİTİB. There are 900 DITIB-run mosques in Germany, about 10% of them believed to be closely overseen by Turkish intelligence, serving a population of about three million Turkish Muslims.  <3>

Sweden

The Muslim Brotherhood is creating a 'parallel social structure' in Sweden with the help of 'political elites' who foster a culture of silence, a damning government report has found. The document claims that the Brotherhood is building a 'parallel society' within the Scandinavian country, which can help the Islamist group to achieve its ends. 

Publication of the damning document about the “MB” has sparked a row in Sweden, with critics labeling the report 'conspiratorial' and claiming it misrepresents Islam. The report, which was published before, was commissioned by Sweden's Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), which is part of the country's Ministry of Defense.

Simply we can use "the Muslim Brotherhood" or "MB"

The paper's authors claim the Muslims Brotherhood is working to increase the number of practicing Muslims in Sweden, which may increase tension with the secular society and puts community cohesion in jeopardy.  <4>

DİTİB

Almost contemporaneously, Turkish state Islam became active abroad with the purpose to prevent what was perceived by Ankara as religious radicalization and to provide state controlled religious services. This section outlines the history of DİTİB in Europe including Germany, its relations with the European and Turkish, its perspective on radicalization, including excerpts from interviews taken with DİTİB personnel, a Turkish religious attaché, prevention professionals, a German expert in Islamic theology and a German public official, as well as my observations based on the mosque visits in Berlin and Cologne.   <5>

Classification of Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist group

The West has three reasons to ban Muslim Brotherhood:

Muslim Brotherhood is the main source of extremist ideology used by terrorist groups.

Many of the top al-Qaeda leaders, particularly Ayman al-Zawahiri, and then some of the leaders of “ISIS” in the Syrian city of Raqqa are former members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The history of Muslim Brotherhood is full of violence and terrorism, including political assassinations, and recently, anti-state operations in Egypt.

Alistair Burt, British Minister of State for Middle East Affairs said that London would impose tight control over the behavior of the Brotherhood, he added that MB had “concealed its extremist agenda” in Egypt.

Burt also stressed in his article: “despite the fact that there isn’t enough proof to allow us to ban the organization, we will impose tight surveillance on the Brotherhood’s behavior and their activities including, visa requests, their source of funding for charity organizations and their relationships with international organizations.”

The Western and European countries have belatedly realized the seriousness of the threats imposed by the presence of Muslim Brotherhood in their societies and take them seriously, where  Muslim  Brotherhood aims to create a social entity parallel , competing European community and the principles and values of its citizens. These attempts have become a long-term challenge to the issue of social cohesion in Europe.  <6>

Organizations and mosques that work for Turkey in Europe

Germany

 About three million people of Turkish origin live in it. It has nearly 2,000 mosques out of a total of 3,000 mosques in Germany whose architecture is Turkish, including (900) mosques funded by the Turkish Islamic Federation for Religious Affairs. Among the most prominent mosques and organizations run by Turkey are:

 Cologne Mosque  : in the district of Earnfeld, close to the Cologne TV Tower. Quoted from the "Al-Jazeera" Mubasher website on September 28, 2018.

Mosque “ Mimari Sinan” : in Mozbach, this mosque is located on the west bank of the River Elts in the city of Mosbach, Bavaria, 1993

Citlik Mosque : near the Cemetery of the Turks.

Al-Fatih Mosque  : in the western city of Essen

Yavuz Sultan Selim Mosque Baden : Württemberg Mannheim

Sultan Ayub Mosque: located in Bavaria, Nuremberg

The Great Mosque (Bogengen), Baden-Württemberg, Bogengen 1998

Turkish Ditib Organization   <7>

 Austria

Nizam Al-Alam Mosque: its name changed on June 18, 2018 to “Vienna Pranlar”.

Turkish National Grey Wolves Organization: It has branches in many countries and operates a mosque in the Favoriten district of Vienna. According to the "BBC" website on June 8, 2018.

"Grey" is the spelling the organisation adopts

The Arab Religious Association of Austria: operates six mosques that were included in the government decision to close in June 2018, three of them in Vienna, two in the region of Upper Austria and one in Carinthia .

Britain 

Azizia Mosque: It is located in Stoke Newington “The English” in London, England, United Kingdom. The construction of the mosque has been funded by the British Turkish Islamic Society since 1983.  <8>

European Council for Fatwa and Research

Founded by “Yusif Al-Qaradawi”, the mufti of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1997, and its headquarters are in Klonski in the Irish capital Dublin, according to “Asharq Al-Awsat” on July 15, 2019. He finally turned to dealing with some issues that indirectly support terrorism, which angered some Europeans and Muslims in the West, who reported that these kinds of opinions incite hatred for this entity, it is funded by Qatar.

Islamic Council of Britain

The largest Islamic institution in Britain and the largest group of Muslim students in Britain was linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. According to the report, the Islamic Council in Britain, an institution under which more than 500 Islamic organizations in Britain fall under its umbrella, claims to be a “non-sectarian institution,” but it is believed that the Muslim Brotherhood’s supporters “played an important role in establishing and managing it. The report emphasized that the report says that the Muslim Brotherhood "has a great influence" on the Muslim League in Britain and the largest union of Muslim students in Britain.

 France

Brotherhood centers in France

France hosts many Brotherhood institutions that spread the group’s ideology, amid Qatari funds for some cultural and investment centers. <9>

European Institute for Islamic and Human Sciences

The institute was founded (IESH) in the suburb of Saint-Denis in the capital, Paris, and the number of its students annually is about (1000) to (1500) students.

Federation of Islamic Organizations in France

Omar Lasfar heads the Union of Islamic Organizations (UOIF), which is referred to as one of the most prominent institutions affiliated with the Brotherhood in the country, and was founded in 1983 and includes within its framework 250 cultural and religious societies, including those working in the fields of training imams

Islamic Union of French Students

It was founded in 1989 by the Lebanese “MB” leader Faisal Mawlawi ,and in 1996 its short name became "EMF.

Islamic Institute (Paris Grand Mosque)

The institute is subject to suspicions of cooperating with the Muslims Brotherhood and embracing its members. It was established on July 15, 1926, and Qatar is interested in following up its activities and the history of its effectiveness.

Eyup Sultan Mosque: It is located in the city of “Strasbourg” in France, in the Ottoman style. It is the largest mosque in Europe and the construction work takes 3 and a half years

Assessment



The Muslim Brotherhood worked in various ways and methods to create parallel societies within Europe, and to work to ensure societal, financial and political loyalties within those parallel societies with the aim of influencing decision-making centers within Europe.

The dangers and threats of the Muslim Brotherhood are represented in the fact that it broke many of the European norms and legal rules, and worked to intensify its efforts and activities outside those strict rules, despite of political efforts, security and intelligence agencies in Europe to curb the expansion of this Muslims Brotherhood and prevent it from creating more societies.

The parallelism inside Europe aim to change the demographic composition of the European societies and the emergence of new societal security threats in Europe. The increasing movements of the extreme right in response to the escalation of parallel societies and the isolation and rejection of  European societal and intellectual values ​​such as the values ​​of secularism and Freedom, mutual peaceful coexistence and democracy, and the rejection of these parallel societies to the idea of ​​"integration" into European society.



The Muslim Brotherhood was able to pretend as the victim as well establishing the parallel societies that the group created, by using religion and using the Islamophobia   in order to incite the decision-making circles in Europe and pressure them in order to obtain political, social and even security gains.

How did the Brotherhood penetrate the Islamic societies in Europe?

Europe began to review its political positions on the "Muslim Brotherhood" after discovering their deception and double stances.

The positions of European countries evolved from the stage of monitoring the Muslim Brotherhood and its continuous demand to reject extremism, and discussing banning the group and classifying it as a terrorist organization. Europe took those measures after knowing the double standards of MB group, and how it exploits the atmosphere of European democracy to implement its agenda inside and outside Europe to achieve political gains.

The Muslim Brotherhood established a series of organizations that appear to be independent, but they truly, support networks of companies, charities, organizations, schools, and many other entities, in order to pass on its extremist ideological discourse. Terrorist attacks in European countries revealed the existence of an ideological agreement between the perpetrators of those attacks and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Likewise, the Brotherhood's attempts to create a parallel society, and the exploitation of all means available to it, especially social media, to spread its extremist ideas. Therefore, Europe should review its policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist organizations, enhance the integration of Muslims into European societies, and intensify supervision over the individuals affiliated in Europe.

The Muslim Brotherhood was able to spread within European societies, as a result of their high ability to organize and administer, as well as their use of the “victim and violence” duality, which created a fertile environment for extremism, and exaggerated anti-Muslim attitudes to establish a mental image that there is a state of intense hostility between Muslim.

Despite, European countries, did not classify the "Brotherhood" as a terrorist group,  and did not resolve their issue to ban the Brotherhood, although they took some positive steps such as banning some books of "Sayyid Qutb" and closing some centers run by the MB.

It is necessary to have an alternative entity that represents Muslim communities in the countries of the West, representing the moderate religious belief that most Muslims adopt, and does not have any party or political ambitions, with which European decision-makers can cooperate with them.

The risks of establishing parallel societies in Europe, the Muslim Brotherhood project!

Europe represents the incubator and safe haven for the banned Muslim Brotherhood, which succeeded in establishing a network of relationships of different nationalities.

 They managed a “political marriage” with personal relations, and it gathered together plans and goals, and its activities extended in Europe through many institutions and centers and received support from countries supporting the group from the international organization of the Brotherhood.

German intelligence is still facing a challenge so far, in obtaining documents and evidence, in order to place the group on terrorist lists, despite its warnings that the group is more dangerous than al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The intelligence is facing a big obstacle; the separation between the "hard core" of the Muslims Brotherhood and its secret organizations, between the commercial and political facades and the organizations that use it as a cover for its activities.

What makes the scene more complicated is that those interfaces that can be considered Brotherhood arms deny the existence of any organizational relationship, and this is due to the fact that the Muslims Brotherhood in Europe understands well the laws and procedures, enabling it to circumvent these laws and protect itself from any judicial or security accountability.

The German parliament, especially the political opposition, always pressures the ruling coalition to reveal the group’s activities and its impact on German society, thus enabling it to propose any future project to limit the Muslims Brotherhood and review their activities.

Nevertheless, German parliament monitors the activities of the Muslims Brotherhood organization in Europe, closely, in order to obtain any evidence against them.

What European intelligence needs is to strengthen its reports on the Muslims Brotherhood, by uncovering ”MB”’s activities, submitting its reports to the European Parliaments, and publishing what can be published publicly.

By: Jassim Mohamad , Researcher on terrorism and intelligence Affairs – Bonn   

<1> Europe must finally face up to the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood

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<2> France ... New restrictions on recruiting imams in mosques, in order to fight extremism https://bit.ly/3kYFixY

<3> The Muslim Brotherhood and Germany Security  https://bit.ly/3pQckE8

<4> The Muslim Brotherhood is creating a 'parallel social http://dailym.ai/39juVTt

<5> Turkish State Islam Abroad https://bit.ly/3nL0NEj

<6> How does “Muslim Brotherhood” manage its networks from inside Europe?By Hazim saeed

https://bit.ly/3nMQqzJ

<7> Exploitation of building mosques in Europe for political purposes ... Turkey https://bit.ly/3kVuUHo

<8> European Council for Fatwa and Research   https://bit.ly/3kOKzbm

<9> Brotherhood centers in France  https://bit.ly/36VHJws