Britain must wake up to the Muslim Brotherhood’s growing influence
Britain can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines as the rest of the world acts against the global Muslim Brotherhood movement, Ghanem Nuseibeh writes.
Britain can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines as the rest of the world acts against the global Muslim Brotherhood movement.
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Since its founding in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has worked diligently to implement its stated slogan “Islam is the solution”. The movement started in Egypt but quickly spread across the world where Muslim communities exist, including Britain.
While the Brotherhood claims to be a peaceful, democratic organisation, its ideology, actions and activities in Western communities have generated enormous controversy. Its self-professed aim is the establishment of a state governed by Sharia law under a caliphate and its core values include antisemitism and anti-Christian sentiments.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s modus operandi consists of two parts. The first is to gather public support and the second is to increase influence.
The movement has become adept at piggybacking on causes that are populist without breaking local laws. They infiltrate unassuming communities by running mosques and providing services to communities such as football clubs and language schools. They have made themselves an integral part of our society.
The other pillar of the Muslim Brotherhood strategy is influence, particularly in government and local government. They look for opportunistic gaps in countries to get involved in government infrastructure.
Earlier this year, the French government was presented with a report about the Muslim Brotherhood in that country and warned about what was described as “entryism”.
The Muslim Brotherhood wants its members to be part of government at all levels to influence policy to serve its interests. President Macron asked his government to come up with solutions to combat this.
There is no doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood uses similar tactics in Britain. In fact, what the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to do in France is precisely what it has already managed to do on many levels in Britain.
Current calls to define Islamophobia are very much at the heart of the strategy of the Brotherhood. It wants to criminalise criticism of Islamism, not to criminalise hate against Muslims. At the same time, Western societies are depicted as decadent and anti-Muslim. The movement has always been a step ahead of politicians.
The sad reality is that Britain does not have a strategy to deal with the Muslim Brotherhood threat. A 2015 British government report into the Muslim Brotherhood focused on the global work of the movement and concluded that it should not be banned (unlike in several Middle Eastern countries, where it is proscribed as a terrorist organisation).
What is urgently needed now is a comprehensive study on the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities inside Britain, similar to the French government’s report. More importantly, we need an action plan on how to deal with what I fear is a major national security threat.
Unfortunately, members of the current Labour government appear blind to the problem. This is in profound contrast to the Gordon Brown government which banned the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf Qaradawi from entering Britain.
There seems little possibility that the current government would take such action. In fact, Britain now has an open-door policy to Muslim Brotherhood members. Turkey – even with its Islamist leader, has realised the threat of the Brotherhood and cracked down on its activities.
Many Muslim Brotherhood members duly left Turkey and established themselves in Britain. France’s growing intolerance to the movement is also pushing the Brotherhood towards Britain, which is seen as the soft underbelly of the Western world.
In the work of Muslims Against AntiSemitism in fighting extremism, we combat the Muslim Brotherhood surgically, even what we are able to do is firefighting than as part of a coherent national strategy. With our limited resources, we have successfully fought the movement and its supporters.
In 2019, we successfully had the Apple Store remove the Euro Fatwa app created by an organisation run by the Muslim Brotherhood leader Qaradawi, until the extremist rhetoric was removed. But we are increasingly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of capabilities and resources that the movement has in Britain.
Without government intervention to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain, the threat posed by this insidious movement will continue to grow exponentially and undermine both Britain’s moderate Muslim communities and British democratic values themselves.