The stories of the individuals profiled here do not constitute anything remotely close to a statistically relevant survey of former Western Brotherhood members. They are just a handful among the thousands of individuals who belong to Western Brotherhood milieus and to the unquantifiable but obviously smaller group of those who have left the organization. The evidence they provide, which I have made all possible efforts to cross-check but which in some cases is difficult to verify, is inevitably anecdotal, not empirical. Yet despite these caveats, their testimonies provide unique insights into the internal dynamics of a notoriously secretive organization, giving important insiders’ perspectives on a reality virtually unknown to the outside world.
The individuals who constitute this small sample possess different characteristics. They had different socioeconomic backgrounds and personal histories when they first entered the sphere of the Muslim Brotherhood. They joined the organization in different countries, from Morocco to Sweden, and they did so at different times, from the 1950s (in the case of Kamal Helbawy) to the beginning of the twenty-first century (in the case of Mohamed Louizi). They stayed inside the organization for different lengths of time and occupied different ranks. Their stories largely reflect this heterogeneity. Yet their accounts overall are remarkably consistent, if not at times identical. From nitty-gritty details of how the Brotherhood in the West operates to the motivations that led them to disengage from the group, the individuals interviewed for this book tell stories that are similar to one another and, in many cases, to those of the few other former Western Brothers who have discussed their experiences elsewhere.
By the same token, most accounts of the individuals profiled provide a solid answer to the queries posed at the beginning of this book (chapter 2): that is, whether the dynamics of recruitment by, inner workings of, structure of, and disengagement from the Muslim Brotherhood in the West were similar to those described for the mother branch in Egypt. The information gathered from interviews, complemented by accounts of other individuals and analysis of various documents, seem to clearly indicate that many of the dynamics of how the Brotherhood operates in the East are replicated, at times with remarkable fidelity, in the West. Many aspects of Brotherhood life, in fact, seem to have been transplanted tout court—or subjected to only minor variations—from the Arab world to Europe and North America. As for reasons for leaving the organization, while some are identical in the East and the West, others are peculiar to the West.
From the accounts of all the individuals profiled, the process of joining the Muslim Brotherhood, from the “spotting” of new potential members by Brotherhood recruiters to (often years later) the induction ceremony in which the new Brother swears baya, appears to be virtually identical in the Arab world and in the West. The detailed descriptions of the phases of the process provided by all interviewees have almost no differences among them and match to a T the dynamics described in chapter 2 for the Brotherhood in Egypt.
Particularly useful in this regard are the accounts of Helbawy and Louizi, the only two individuals profiled who joined the Brotherhood in the Arab world before coming to the West. Helbawy has the vantage point of one of the most senior Brotherhood leaders ever to settle in the West—and someone who, by his own account, has recruited hundreds of new members. He describes the process of joining, in all its phases, as identical in the East and the West. Louizi was a much more junior member, but he joined the Brotherhood twice, first in Morocco (although technically MRR/MUR was not the Brotherhood but a Moroccan Islamist organization modeled on it) and then in France. He describes the process he went through in both countries as largely the same.
For most individuals profiled, recruitment started when they were spotted by a Brotherhood recruiter and invited to join a study group. That was the case for Omero Marongiu, Mohamed Louizi (both in Morocco and France), Ahmed Akkari, and Kamal Helbawy (in Egypt). Pierre Durrani was not invited to a study group but at the time of his recruitment was enrolled at IESH, the Brothers’ graduate school, which itself could be seen as a giant study group. All individuals began in “open” circles or study groups and then, upon being invited, entered more restricted, closed circles. In their interviews, they all clearly identified these circles as ways to disseminate Islamist viewpoints and, at the same time, to observe and select new talent for the group. All also mentioned that while they had varying degrees of suspicion (little, in the case of Ahmed Akkari), they initially were not fully aware that the study circles were vehicles for Brotherhood recruitment. When asked what was read in the study groups, they all listed the same Brotherhood authors, noting that the literature became more markedly Islamist as they progressed. They all emphasized the importance of the relationship with their mentor and the constant observation and testing to which they were subjected.
Unsurprisingly for a meticulously bureaucratic organization like the Brotherhood, many of these dynamics are not just informal practices but have been codified, in the West as well as in the Arab world. Evidence of such codification comes, for example, from internal documents of the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood obtained by the Chicago Tribune.1 An instructional booklet for recruiters advised them to scout mosques, Islamic classes, and Muslim organizations looking for individuals with the appropriate “commitment, loyalty, and obedience” to Brotherhood ideals. Fitting candidates were invited to participate in prayer groups that they were asked to keep secret. If a candidate asked about a particular meeting to which he had not been invited, the booklet instructed the recruiter to respond: “Make it a habit not to meddle in that which does not concern you.” Upon initiation, new members were told that they were part of a global organization and that, according to the booklet, membership “is not a personal honor but a charge to sacrifice all that one has for the sake of raising the banner of Islam.”
The process of induction is, again, identical in the accounts of the interviewees to how it is known to happen in the Arab world. All recounted receiving an offer from a senior Brother, in most cases their mentor. And although only in some cases was it preceded by a preparatory seminar, all describe a moving ceremony that culminated in their swearing baya. As for the personal reasons that led them to join, all the individuals profiled spoke of their desire to help spread Islam and their feeling of pride at having joined such an exclusive and renowned organization.
It should be noted that most of these dynamics, whether the mechanisms of recruitment or the personal motivations of those recruited, are confirmed by the accounts of a handful of other former members of the Brotherhood in the West who have written about their experiences. They include Farid Abdelkrim, who was active in the French milieu alongside Mohamed Louizi and Omero Marongiu; Michaël Privot, a former member of the Brotherhood in Belgium during the same time, who has written a book about his experience, Quand j’étais Frère musulman (When I was a Muslim Brother); and Mustafa Saied, an Indian American who joined the Brotherhood in Tennessee.
The descriptions provided of the internal dynamics of the Western Brotherhood, from its structure to its regulations, point to remarkable similarities among them and with the Arab world. All the individuals profiled describe how, upon induction, they progressively began to better understand the structure of the Brotherhood. While that knowledge can be only limited for low-level members, as were most of the interviewees, all, including a senior leader like Helbawy, describe the Brotherhood in every Western country as a highly structured organization with a clear hierarchy.
From the privileged vantage point of senior leader who operated both in the East and in the West, Helbawy makes clear that the Brotherhood in each Western country replicated the structure found in Egypt and other Arab countries, just on a smaller scale. Exactly as in Egypt, Brotherhood organizations in the West have the usra as the core unit; various usras come together and meet at the regional level, and an elected leadership presides at the top. Obviously, because the number of Brothers in Western countries, even the larger ones, is relatively small, some differences exist, but many defining aspects of the Brotherhood’s structure in the Arab world are reproduced in the West.
All the interviewees highlight the centrality of the usra, the nuclear cell of the Brotherhood. All recount the weekly meetings (generally on Friday nights) and the bigger meetings with members of various usras from the region once a month. The internal dynamics of the usra are also described in almost identical terms, although those usras were located in different Western countries. Interviews conducted by the scholar Hazem Kandil with members of the Egyptian Brotherhood confirm this analysis. “On a short trip to Seattle,” writes Kandil, “[Egyptian Brotherhood member] Malik felt so emotionally drained that he had to inquire frantically whether there were any family [usra] meetings being held in the area. He was directed through a Brotherhood mosque to a family meeting held by a Pakistani, with an Egyptian, a Sudanese, and an American convert in attendance. Malik recounted with amazement how this meeting replicated the ones held back home to the last detail, and how those Brothers, whom he had just met, greeted him as warmly as those he had known all his life.”2
Descriptions of other aspects of life inside Brotherhood confirm these striking similarities between the accounts and the dynamics in the Middle East. All describe paying a fee (most put the amount at 2.5 percent of their personal income, but it varied). The tarbiya curriculum appears to be virtually identical everywhere, though local leaders may introduce slight variations. All describe an important division of labor within the group, with a high degree of specialization, and highlight the importance of the different levels of membership, noting a substantial gap between junior and senior members. And they all describe an environment shaped by a deep adherence to strict rules and hierarchies, at least on the part of the more junior members.
Although in all these respects East and West appear almost identical, one dynamic seems to be a peculiarity of the West. All the individuals profiled indicate that as soon as they began their experience inside a Western branch of the Brotherhood, they understood that there was both a nonpublic or secret structure and a public one—or, in the words of Mohamed Louizi, “the façade and the arrière boutique.” Helbawy authoritatively explains that while the Western Brothers fully replicated the secret structure adopted in Middle Eastern countries, they also created a large web of heterogeneous organizations that they control but that do not publicly identify as being linked to the Brotherhood. The interviewees attribute the Brothers’ decision to create this binary structure to their understanding that organizations that cannot, in theory, be directly linked to the group are more effective at conducting the kind of engagement it seeks with Muslim communities and Western society.
Another feature that emerges from the accounts, and is backed by several additional sources, is the transnational nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. All the accounts describe a fluid yet extremely tight and effective network of activists spread all over the world. While a separate Brotherhood organization, with its own leadership and structure, exists in each country analyzed in depth (the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, France, the United States) and in most other Western countries, the activists in them are all connected and regularly communicating and cooperating on innumerable initiatives. While many of these ties are informal, they are strengthened by family and business connections, aside from the obvious ideological ones. Various formal organizations, such as FIOE and FEMYSO, also tie them together. As the individuals profiled indicate, these connections also extend to organizations belonging to the Islamist movements that, while independent of it, adopt a worldview and a methodology similar to the Brotherhood’s—chiefly Turkish (Millî Görüş and the AKP) and South Asian (Jamaat-e-Islami) Islamism.
The claim of informal connections with the global Muslim Brotherhood is not particularly controversial, but the degree to which Western Brotherhood organizations are included inside the organizational structures of the Brotherhood in the Arab world has long been disputed. The essential question is, are Western Brotherhood organizations completely independent of their mother organizations in the East? The accounts in this book do not provide a definitive answer, because most of the individuals profiled were low-level members who would have no access to such elite and therefore secret dynamics.
On one hand, it does not appear that Western Brotherhood organizations regularly receive orders from the East on what strategy to adopt and how to pursue their goals. On the other hand, various episodes point to a level of influence and connectivity that exceeds what the Western Brotherhood has at times claimed. It is quite telling, for example, that Ahmed Akkari, who had been recruited by, had joined, and was active in the Brotherhood exclusively in Denmark, could leave the organization by hand-delivering his resignation letter to the head of the Brotherhood in Lebanon. Similarly, Hussien Elmeshad formally joined the Brotherhood in New Jersey in the span of a few weeks after arriving in the United States because a senior member of the group in Egypt referred him to a contact there. Mohamed Louizi and a current Brotherhood member who wishes to stay anonymous claim that members of the Brotherhood in North Africa can join the Brotherhood in Europe simply by presenting a letter of recommendation (tazkiya) from the leaders of their branch to those in Europe.3
In light of how the individuals profiled have described the structure of the Muslim Brotherhood in each of their countries, it can be argued that the debate over determining whether a Western Muslim organization “belongs to the Brotherhood” is often incorrectly framed. In many cases, in fact, an organization’s affiliation to the Brotherhood is assessed based on its connections to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or, more broadly, the Arab world. Those making the charge that a specific organization is linked to the Brotherhood will say that “it is part of the Muslim Brotherhood” or use similar expressions that denote a subordination to some branch in the Middle East. Those denying that the organization has ties to the Brotherhood will emphasize said organization’s independence from Cairo or, more broadly, the Middle East.
It appears that neither analysis captures the reality of the Brotherhood in the West. Unquestionably, ties to the mother branch in the Middle East are an important indicator, but they are not the key to determining whether an organization is “Muslim Brotherhood.” What all individuals profiled described is a reality in which, in each of their Western countries, a small cluster of Brotherhood members created an independent Brotherhood structure, which mirrored that of the mother countries, albeit on a smaller scale. There is therefore a French Brotherhood, a Swedish Brotherhood, a British Brotherhood, an American Brotherhood, exactly as there is an Egyptian, a Jordanian, and a Syrian Brotherhood. The way to identify whether a public organization based in a Western country belongs to the Brotherhood is therefore not necessarily by uncovering possible but, in most cases, feeble ties to any Middle Eastern country. Rather, that determination is better made by assessing whether they are a direct emanation of the Brotherhood branch of the specific Western country in which it operates. While it is often true, as Western Brothers say, that their organizations and structures are independent and do not “receive orders from Cairo,” that fact in itself does not indicate that they are not Muslim Brotherhood.
In an interview with Xavier Ternisien, a French expert on religions, Mohammed Akef clearly described how the Brotherhood transcends formalities such as official affiliation. “We do not have an international organization; we have an organization through our perception of things,” explained the murshid. “We are present in every country. Everywhere there are people who believe in the message of the Muslim Brothers. In France, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF) does not belong to the organization of the Brothers. They follow their own laws and rules.”4 Confirming the informality of the movement’s ties, Akef elsewhere referred to the UOIF as “our brothers in France.” Finally, in a 2005 interview, he explained that European Ikhwan organizations have no direct link to the Egyptian branch, yet they coordinate actions with them. He concluded the interview with a telling remark: “We have the tendency not to make distinctions among us.”5
Another factor on which all the individuals profiled agree is the Western Brothers’ ability to keep the many Muslims who interact and even work with them in the dark about the Brotherhood’s aims and very existence. “I was basically helping an organization I didn’t know the existence of,” says Pierre Durrani of how he felt after the revelation that the organizations he had been working with in Sweden for years were offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood. “I had heard the name [Muslim Brotherhood], because I was not stupid, but I didn’t connect the dots at all,” he adds. Kamal Helbawy confirms that using well-meaning Muslims (and, in some cases, non-Muslims as well) who can be useful to the organization without revealing itself to them, even after years of close interactions, is a strategy of the group.
A quintessential example of this dynamic is offered by Pernilla Ouis, who now says the Brotherhood “fooled” her. She also maintains that had somebody told her and her colleagues at Salaam the truth back in the day, “we would have rejected it outright and thought it was an attempt to smear Islam. We were very naïve.” Mohamed Louizi writes on this issue:
Furthermore, not all motivations and reasons to join the UOIF are the same. The level of engagement is not uniform. Some, a minority, know what they are doing and keep their sight on the Tamkine from afar, in silence and in secret. Others, more numerous this time, embark for the sake of Allah, to resemble their Prophet, to give meaning to their lives, to protect against what is unknown, to purify their hearts and feel useful, etc.
They also are not naive people, far from it. They are sincere women and men, often educated, respectable, and intelligent, but who walk behind battle-hardened Islamic leaders, with their young innocent children who are unaware of the stakes, with their own eyes blinded, their tongues atrophied, yet strangely with their hearts finding rest and filled with emotion and the satisfaction of having, as a family, accomplished their religious duties, or so they think. They are the keyboards on social media, the hands, feet, and pockets of the UOIF. They believe that they are building and maintaining a mosque for God, but they are building an HQ for the UOIF. Those people ignore everything, or almost everything, of the true planned journey. Themselves victims of a gigantic deception, of another doublespeak. I really mean this!6
A slightly different dynamic, also described by several of the individuals profiled, is that of the conscious fellow travelers. These are individuals who are not members of the Brotherhood but work with it while aware of the true nature of their partners. Abdur-Rahman Muhammad was, during his activist days, a quintessential conscious fellow traveler, running his own activities but coordinating and receiving support from the Brothers. Omero Marongiu likewise, but to a lesser degree, attempted to find a modus vivendi with the French Brotherhood milieu and take advantage of its platform after leaving it. The relationship between Brotherhood networks and conscious fellow travelers is one of mutual advantage, and the Brothers often rely on them to counteract their small numbers.
While the accounts of how the Brotherhood works appear to be remarkably homogeneous, the individuals profiled show less uniformity of views when assessing its aims. On one end of the spectrum, former members like Mohamed Louizi, Ahmed Akkari, and Pierre Durrani strongly believe that the Brotherhood is fully committed to a strategy of subversion (which Mohamed refers to as tamkin) aimed at slowly undermining the very foundations of Western society, seeking eventually, even if it takes centuries, to replace them with an Islamic order. Others, like Kamal Helbawy, Hussien Elmeshad and Adly Abu Hajar, while themselves harsh critics of the Brotherhood, do not see such malign intentions. All of them—who, to be sure, still see themselves as Islamists or conservative Muslim activists—argue that the current leaders of the Brotherhood have strayed from Hassan al Banna’s original message (the main reason that Helbawy and Elmeshad left it) to seek power for themselves and have failed to adapt their worldview to the reality of the West, but they do not see the Brotherhood’s ideology as inherently problematic. Others among those profiled position themselves somewhere in between these two views. Capturing the thinking of many critics of the group, Omero claims that the Western Brothers do dream of making every society, including the West’s, Islamic. But, being pragmatic by nature and understanding that even in the most optimistic of scenarios that outcome is possible only in a distant future, they keep it in the back of their minds and work toward more concrete goals.
This middle-of-the road assessment, arguing that the Brothers do harbor in the back of their mind lofty ideas of an Islamic conquest, albeit a peaceful one, but work on and are constrained by significantly more mundane realities, has been elegantly put forward by Hakim El Karoui, a scholar whose report on Islamism in France (2018) has been very influential in French policy circles. Writes El Karoui:
This Tamkin project, if it exists, is more wishful thinking than a conspiracy. It describes the desire of power of a brotherhood which, because it is semi-secret and long confined in clandestinity, nourishes fantasies. On the part of the Muslim Brothers settled in Europe, there is a desire to be influential, on one hand with the European Muslim populations that it aims to supervise, on the other with the political decision makers, in order to appear, thanks to a moderate discourse, as the principal interlocutors on matters related to Islam. In short, establishing a dual hegemony, with Muslims and with power. Perhaps in the minds of some, this goal is only a step towards the Islamization of European societies and Tamkin.… In fact, the main question is not “What do the European Muslim Brothers want?” but “What can the European Muslim Brothers do?” Whatever their objectives, they are confronted with the realities of the society in which the Brothers are established, the sociopolitical context of the various European countries, the different reception of their discourse within Muslim communities, or the competition of other religious discourses. If there was indeed a plot, it would run into the reality.7
Similarly divided are the opinions on the relationship between the Brotherhood and violence. Helbawy and Abu Hajar argue that the Western Brothers completely reject violent means. Michaël Privot, a former member of the Belgian Brotherhood and FEMYSO vice president who wrote a book extremely critical of the group after leaving it but retains loose connection to the Brotherhood milieu, agrees. “Even if I was only really active six years within the Brotherhood structures,” he writes, “I never encountered—nor was I ever asked to spread—antidemocratic, violent, racist, segregationist speech, nor calls for the caliphate or for the conversion of my peers.… I could not find any discourse calling for violence, jihad, or segregation.”8
While none argues that the Brothers are engaged in any terrorist activity in the West, other individuals profiled for this book disagree with Privot’s claim. Mohamed, Ahmed, and Pierre maintain that literature from Qutb and other Islamist authors who advocate violence features prominently in the group’s tarbiya curriculum and the publications it disseminates. They also argue that the Brothers’ abandonment of violence is purely practical, as the group has decided that the methods used by jihadists are not incorrect from a moral or religious point of view but solely from a tactical one. Moreover, they assert that support for the violent actions of Hamas in Palestine or other groups in territories where the Brothers claim that Muslims are “under attack” or “suffering occupation” is unanimous within the Brotherhood, a unity shown both in words and in deeds. Pierre also talks, at least in reference to the 1990s, of a “gray area”—moments of overlap between Brothers and jihadists in Stockholm. “The general idea that was conveyed to me [by the Brothers],” he recounts, “was that we are all brothers against the kufar [infidels].”
There is also partial agreement on how organized the Western Brothers are. All former Brothers, whether their testimony was reported directly or indirectly here, agree that despite being fairly small, the group has managed to punch above its weight and achieve the remarkable result of creating organizations that have become the main representatives of Western Muslim communities. While all acknowledge the internal inefficiencies, at times almost comical, the accounts differ on the Brothers’ overall degree of efficiency. Privot writes about the “complete lack of organization within the Muslim Brotherhood of Belgium” and says that “with respect to our local usra, I think that it ranks among the most dysfunctional of the history of the Brotherhood.”9 He acknowledges that Belgium is a country where the Brotherhood had only a limited presence, and that therefore his assessment does not necessarily apply to other countries. Farid Abdelkrim argues that the UOIF and, more generally, the French Brotherhood milieu have accomplished remarkable results but warns about seeing them as an infallible machine. He views them in relation to competing Muslim organizations, whose abysmal capabilities he stresses, and thus calls them “the least disorganized Islamic organization of France.”10
All the former Brothers, whether their testimonies appear in this book or in other publications, agree on the core characteristics of the Brothers’ modus operandi, which include gradualism, patience, self-restraint, pragmatism, and levelheadedness. The constant cost-benefit analysis, the endless evaluation (not always correct, obviously) of when and how much the movement should act aggressively and push back and when it should lay low, is seen by all as a constant in the group, as well as often a source of internal frustration.
The reasons that lead individuals to leave the Muslim Brotherhood are inevitably highly complex. Each former member underwent an evolution that was deeply personal, the product of a unique thought process. Nevertheless, the accounts published here and elsewhere show a number of similarities. As is common among those who disengage from other movements to which followers are intensely committed, all spoke of frustration with both organizational and ideological matters, showing a combination of disenchantment with how the group functioned and what ideas it espoused. Though there are important differences among them, they share many criticisms both of the organization and of its ideology. Similarly, while some specifics vary with location, many of the frustrations that have led some members of the Brotherhood in the West to leave the organization are similar to those expressed by members in the Arab world.
Regarding the organization, a common complaint is the Muslim Brotherhood’s lack of internal democracy. From Ahmed Akkari to Pierre Durrani, from Omero Marongiu to a senior member like Kamal Helbawy, all agree with Mohamed Louizi’s assessment that “the big wigs can call the shots with a phone call, ignoring votes, procedures, and statutes.” While obedience to the senior leadership is taught to each aspiring member from the very beginning of his tarbiya, the lack of transparency in the internal decision-making process and the impossibility of challenging the leadership’s positions frustrates many Brothers, whether in the East or in the West. The Brotherhood’s strict application of the principle of al-sam’ wa-l-tâ’a (listening and obeying)—or, as Privot sarcastically calls it, “shut your mouth and obey, as a good soldier in submission to the great leader and to all the small middle-ranking leaders”11—is often one of the first steps on the road to disenchantment and disengagement from the organization.
“The problem is about authoritarian management of power and decision-making,” lamented a Belgian Brother to Samir Amghar and Fall Khadiyatoulah. “We often consult with members and there is a debate of ideas, but it serves no purpose because the final decision always falls on the same individuals.” “One of the reasons that forced me to leave is the fact that each of my initiatives or decisions had to obtain the approval of the person in charge,” a French Brother explains. “Everything had to go through this person. For me, it was difficult to endure. We are of the same age and I have a Ph.D. I do have capabilities.”12 This democratic deficit and the opaque decision-making process have caused tensions and defections throughout the Arab world but are felt as particularly objectionable in the West, where most of the Brotherhood’s activists have grown up in societies that encourage transparency and the expression of one’s own thoughts. Moreover, because in the West the Brotherhood has never been subjected to the repression it has long faced in the Arab world, the organization’s leadership there cannot cite what is often the main justification for this hierarchical obedience.
Another long-standing cause of friction and disenchantment within the Brotherhood, both in the East and in the West, is nepotism. In Europe and North America, many of the first-generation Brotherhood pioneers have propelled their wives, children, and in-laws to some of the top positions inside the milieu. While many of these individuals are unquestionably qualified and capable, the dynamic has frustrated many activists who did not belong to any prominent families and saw themselves as being, in their view, unjustly bypassed. The fact that the wives, children, and in-laws of pioneers such as Yussuf Nada, Ghaleb Himmat, Said Ramadan, Rachid Ghannouchi, and Jamal Barzinji are overly represented in various Brotherhood-related activities reinforces the view that the Western Brotherhood is composed of a small nomenklatura of interconnected activists, an “aristocratic elite” that controls everything.13
Examples abound, but few are more striking than that of the El Zayats. Farouk El Zayat was a midlevel member of the Egyptian Brotherhood when he settled in Germany in the 1960s, marrying a German convert to Islam and becoming the imam of a mosque in Marburg, a university town north of Frankfurt.14 The El Zayats raised six children, most of whom have also been involved in Islamic activities, from German Muslim charities to student organizations. The most famous is Ibrahim el Zayat, who has headed various German organizations and has served in high-ranking positions in pan-European organizations linked to the Brotherhood, among them FEMYSO, IESH, Islamic Relief Worldwide, and the Europe Trust, one of the European Brotherhood’s main financial nodes. Cementing his relationship with Turkish Islamism, Ibrahim el Zayat is married to Sabiha Erbakan, the niece of Turkish Islamism’s godfather, Necmettin Erbakan, and the sister of Mehmet Sabri Erbakan, the former leader of Millî Görüş in Germany.
Other members of the El Zayat family are also active in Brotherhood circles. Bilal El Zayat, for example, is a founding member of the Muslimischen Jugend Deutschland (German Muslim Youth) and an officer of the Muslim Studenten Vereinigung (Muslim Students’ Union). Manal El Zayat is a graduate of IESH, the Brotherhood’s institution of higher learning in France, and has also been involved in various Islamic organizations in several European countries. She is married to the son of Kamal Helbawy.15 Amina el Zayat was involved in a number of Islamic education projects in Bavaria before moving to Austria, where she married Ammar Shakar and headed the Islamisches Religion pädagogisches Akademie (IRPA), an organization that received public funding to train Austrian imams.16
It is telling that Ibrahim el Zayat, arguably one of the most prominent leaders of the European Brotherhood network, was the first president of the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations after the pan-European organization was created in 1996. And FEMYSO itself has traditionally been a training ground for second-generation activists (the children of the first-generation pioneers); after taking the helm of national youth and student organizations, they are given a platform at the European level. Indeed, while FEMYSO presents itself as a grassroots organization of ordinary young European Muslims, an overwhelming majority of its leadership positions are occupied by sons and daughter of some of Europe’s most senior Brotherhood members.
The Executive Committee elected by FEMYSO’s Seventeenth General Assembly in June 2013 illustrates this point well, as the four most senior positions were assigned to scions of top Brotherhood families.17 The assembly elected as president Intisar Kherigi, the daughter of al Nahda leader Rashid Ghannouchi (for more on Kherigi, see chapter 11). One vice president was Hajar al Kaddo, who had experience working with the Islamist charity Human Appeal as deputy manager in Ireland, her country of origin, and then in Turkey and Iraq.18 She is the daughter of Nooh Edreeb al Kaddo, an Iraqi who is one of the leaders of the Irish Brotherhood milieu and a trustee of the Europe Trust and the CEO of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland (ICCI) in the Dublin suburb of Clonskeagh, historically the hub of the Brotherhood in the country and the headquarters of the European Council for Fatwa and Research headed by Qaradawi.19 The other vice president elected was Youssef Himmat, the son of Ghaleb Himmat, a Switzerland-based Brotherhood financier who is Yussuf Nada’s business partner. The treasurer was Anas Saghrouni, the son of Mohamed-Taïeb Saghrouni, an éminence grise of the UOIF and the man who introduced Mohamed Louizi to the Brotherhood in France.
Khalid Chaouki, a former member of the Italian Brotherhood milieu, has provided clear examples of these dynamics, which are common throughout the West.20 Moroccan-born and Italian-raised, Chaouki became active in the then nascent Muslim youth scene in Italy in the mid-1990s. One of his first forays in the world of activism, while still a teenager, was helping to found what was to become one of the first organizations for young Muslims in Italy, the Association of Muslim Young and Students in Italy (Associazione Giovani e Studenti Musulmani in Italia, AGESMI). This group was established under the patronage of UCOII, the Italian Brotherhood milieu’s main organization, and its first board was made up of the sons and daughters of leaders of UCOII.
Chaouki remembers sitting in the conference room of a hotel in Bologna as the president of AGESMI “dictated the articles of our new bylaws and the family assembly approved them without showing a single sign of dissent.” Chaouki was particularly taken aback by one of the articles, which stated that the president had to be married and that his wife had to be head of the female section. He found the proposition unacceptable on two grounds. First, it represented “an integralist view of religion.”21 Second, it was clearly “antimeritocratic,” as who could guarantee that if the president, who was elected, was competent, his wife, who would automatically get the position, was also competent? It only made things worse that at the time, according to Chaouki, only one of the founding members was married, making it crystal clear that the rule was created ad hoc to guarantee his election.
AGESMI failed to gain any traction, and in 2001, days after the attacks of September 11, Chaouki and a group of activists started a new youth organization, Young Muslims of Italy (Giovani Musulmani d’Italia, GMI). GMI, writes Chaouki, wanted “absolute independence from the organizations of the adults, in particular UCOII.” Yet UCOII soon began interfering, in order to control it. Chaouki was harshly attacked by “some youth supported by the heads of UCOII” because he backed the Italian government’s decision to expel an imam who had publicly supported Osama bin Laden. “One always has to defend a brother,” writes Chaouki, explaining the view of his critics. “I detested this logic, which in my opinion is one of the causes of the crisis of Muslim organizations throughout the West; we need to make a choice: in favor either of the sovereign state or of the ambiguity that inevitably leads you to the vision and the realization of a state within the state.”
The ensuing “character assassination” against him led Chaouki to resign from GMI in 2004. After Chaouki, the leadership of GMI returned to the hands of sons of senior UCOII leaders: his immediate successor was Osama el Saghir (discussed in chapter 11), the son of a senior al Nahda official, followed by Anas Breigheche, the son of one of UCOII’s founders. Chaouki has since detached himself from the Brotherhood milieu; in 2013 he became a member of the Italian Parliament (and, in 2018, the president of Rome’s Great Mosque, one of the largest in Europe).
Recounting his days in the Italian Brotherhood milieu, Chaouki brings up another aspect of its lack of internal democracy, connected to but separate from nepotism: ethnic bias. Within AGESMI, GMI, and UCOII, he states, Moroccans like him were a tiny minority, almost completed dominated by activists tracing their roots to the Levant. Even though Muslims from North Africa and, to a lesser degree, the Balkans constitute the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Italy, the leadership of those organizations was monopolized by the core group of activists from Syria, Palestine, and, Jordan who had created the Italian Brotherhood milieu in the late 1970s, together with the children of those activists. Writing in 2005 about the lack of Muslims from Morocco in leadership positions at UCOII (a situation that has since undergone some change), Chaouki states:
Yet, in Italian mosques, which UCOII claims to represent, Moroccans are by far the largest group! Maybe something is wrong. Either Moroccans in Italy are all ignorant and hopeless beyond repair, as some leader of UCOII has stated, or maybe that’s because of the Middle East–style pseudo-democratic rules: bylaws that change at the last second, proxies with voting rights from nonexistent people, budgets that do not know the meaning of the word transparency, assemblies of wise-men and guarantors with access rights completely unknown to all members of the organizations. The things to be said could be many, but let’s limit them to this list to make the case that organizations that call themselves Islamic often betray the values of Islam in favor of the constant search for power and hegemony.22
Other former Brotherhood members regularly bring up the issue of ethnic bias. For many of them, it clearly reflected not just inequalities in the internal democratic process but also a deeper ethical and religious problem within the organization. That a group that touted, in its own name, brotherhood and equality among members of the ummah in effect discriminated against certain ethnic groups within the Muslim community was a major red flag for individuals like Pierre Durrani, who witnessed racism against both ethnic Swedes and non-Arab Muslims. But it was even more decisive for Abdur-Rahman, who had been launched on his own path toward Islam by racial consciousness. The realization that the Brotherhood milieu looked down on African Americans, and had even enshrined those discriminatory positions in a document, was a deal breaker for him.
Lack of internal democracy, nepotism, and ethnic biases are intertwined issues that frustrate many current and former members of the Western Brotherhood, but all those profiled and those whose stories have appeared elsewhere complain even more vigorously about a fourth, connected problem: excessive secrecy. All, without exception, agree that while the secrecy was understandable in the Middle East for the organization to survive the harsh repression of local regimes, it is absolutely unnecessary in the West, particularly in the extreme form adopted.23 And while they all bemoan the secrecy that envelops all aspects of the group’s life, the former members are most frustrated by the denial of the very existence of the Brotherhood in the West.
“We are not selling opium or drugs; we are propagating dawa,” asserts Helbawy, who for decades battled to convince the upper echelons of the organization that the decision to deny the Brotherhood’s existence in the West was both immoral and strategically ill-advised. Like the others, he argues that the Brothers would actually enjoy significantly more success in their efforts at engagement if they presented themselves for who they are, as the secrecy is perceived as indicating shame or an attempt to hide dark agendas. An identical case was made by Privot, a significantly more junior Brother, who repeatedly told “several European leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood that the discourse of denying belonging to the Brotherhood was just untenable and was taking all credibility away from the members, because it made them suspected of lying, and this all the more so as every Muslim is suspected right away of taqiyya.”24 Abdelkrim describes this secrecy as an omerta;25 Abdur-Rahman, as a “kind of sneakiness, like you’re ashamed of something.” All agree it is a major strategic weakness and a behavior that put them off, contributing significantly to their process of disenchantment and disengagement.
While perceived flaws in the organization have been cited by all as crucial in their decision to leave, in most cases deep concerns about the ideology of the Brotherhood had even more weight. Indeed, frustrations about the organization’s inner workings often planted the first seed of doubt, which then led individuals to examine fundamental issues with adherence to the Brotherhood’s creed. In some cases, there was trigger moment that either sparked or culminated the process. In other cases, doubts accumulated slowly, without any peak.
The ideological issues that led each individual to disengage are complex and personal, different from case to case. All the interviewees brought up, in one way or another, their frustration at the Western Brotherhood’s prioritization of politics over religion as one major cause. Some pointed to a particular incident—for example, Ahmed Akkari’s understanding that the Brotherhood’s leadership had simply played politics with the Danish cartoons but was not genuinely incensed by them—that made them think that the Brotherhood was merely using religion to achieve political goals. Others, like Omero and Pierre, came to question their commitment after experiencing a more gradual realization that the Brothers lacked a true spiritual side and were simply engaged in politics.
The different post-Brotherhood trajectories of the individuals analyzed above also reveal the divergent reasons that led them to leave the group. Some, like Helbawy, do not renounce Islamism altogether but simply reject the version of it adopted by the Brotherhood or, more narrowly, the Brotherhood’s current leadership, who they believe have strayed from the original teachings of al Banna. For others, like Ahmed and Mohamed, the rejection of Islamism is complete, in all its manifestations and aspects, and they have instead embraced secularism and traditional forms of Islam.