While the cases analyzed in this book clearly demonstrate common patterns of discontent among the former Western Brotherhood members profiled, one should not draw generalizations. It is difficult to determine if they constitute outliers or if their stories are indicative of a larger phenomenon of dissatisfaction inside the movement. Is the Brotherhood in the West in crisis, as some argue?1 Should the movement’s success or failure be judged by the growth and the stability of its membership? Or, since the Brotherhood is a movement seeking to mobilize the masses but willing to open itself only to few selected members, should success be assessed in another way, such as ability to exert influence within Western Muslim communities and Western elite circles?
These questions cannot be answered easily. Moreover, irrespective of the metrics employed in assessing the Brotherhood, the answer is likely to differ from country to country. Yet it is clear that the 2010s have been an earth-shattering decade for the global Muslim Brotherhood movement and, consequently, for the Brotherhood in the West as well. The primary driver of change has been the so-called Arab Spring, with all its complex and still unfolding dynamics, which has had a huge impact on Brotherhood organizations in the East and the West.
The mass protests, starting in a small town in Tunisia in December 2010 and then sweeping throughout most of North Africa and the Middle East, that came to be known as the Arab Spring took Brotherhood groups—as all other political actors in the region—by surprise. The sudden fall of the regime of Hosni Mubarak and the group’s emergence as Egypt’s most powerful political force, culminating in the election of Mohammed Morsi as president in June 2012, were events that hardly anyone in the Muslim Brotherhood would have predicted as the protests of the early days of the Arab Spring began to unfold.2 Yet despite its initial reluctance to join the revolution, the Brotherhood soon seized the moment and quickly became the main player in the country’s new political era. Even though it had operated semiclandestinely for the better part of eight decades, the Brotherhood was by far the best organized political organization of post-Mubarak Egypt and leveraged all its mobilization and capabilities to ascend to power. It was a triumph that many in Brotherhood milieus well beyond Egypt perceived as historical and bestowed by God, the just divine reward for decades of hard work and persecution.
Similarly monumental was the rise to power of al Nahda, the Tunisian branch of the global Muslim Brotherhood family.3 After the sudden downfall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the last in a series of staunchly secular presidents to rule the country and harshly repress Islamist forces, al Nahda found itself thrust to the forefront of Tunisia’s political life. Following the triumphal return to Tunisia from London of its leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, who had spent decades in exile, al Nahda swept the October 2011 elections: no longer illegal and dispersed, it was running the country as a senior partner of a coalition government. In other Arab countries, the local branches of the Brotherhood engaged in whichever activities local conditions allowed: in Jordan and Morocco that meant protesting and advocating for more democracy, while in Libya and Syria the course of action was joining the civil wars that engulfed both countries.
These events created the perception that finally the Brotherhood’s moment had arrived, and they galvanized Islamists worldwide. Brotherhood milieus in the West immediately mobilized to engage in one of the main tasks of the movement, as described by Yusuf al Qaradawi in his book Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase: lobbying. Understanding that the policies adopted by Western governments in response to the unprecedented event of Islamists ascending to power in major Arab countries would enormously influence the outcome of the experiment, the Western Brotherhood began to deploy all their resources and political connections in an attempt to influence the perceptions of Western publics and administrations.
On the public front, they wrote op-eds in major newspapers, appeared in television debates, and organized talks and demonstrations. To influence more select audiences of policy makers and experts, they organized briefings and arranged meetings between their Western interlocutors and members of Islamist forces in the region. Whether carried out publicly or behind closed doors, these activities sought to convince their Western audiences that the Brotherhood was a moderate force that rejected violence and extremism and fully embraced democracy and human rights. Seeking to make an analogy that could resonate with their interlocutors, Western Brothers often compared themselves to Europe’s Christian Democrats— a political force inspired by religion but fully embracing democracy.4
While the entire Western Brotherhood milieu was engaged in influencing Western audiences and, at the same time, mobilizing Western Muslim communities in favor of the Brotherhood’s rise to power in the countries affected by the Arab Spring, a small yet significant number of its members decided to leave the West and go back to their countries of origin to directly take part in Islamist governance. The important role played in the political developments of various North African and Middle Eastern countries during the Arab Spring by individuals who had spent years—in many cases decades—in Brotherhood milieus in the West is often overlooked, but it clearly indicates the importance of those social environments. Their involvement also had practical consequences, as the political and communication skills acquired by Brotherhood activists during their time in the West significantly influenced how various Brotherhood organizations in the Arab world engaged in diplomatic and media activities, particularly with Western audiences, during the Arab Spring.
These dynamics affected Brotherhood milieus in different Western countries in different ways, largely because of the varied national origins of the individuals within those milieus. And while Western Brotherhood activists from virtually all Middle Eastern and North African countries mobilized, the phenomenon was particularly intense in three North African countries: Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. These were countries where the revolutions managed to topple the regime and that also contained many Brotherhood activists who had settled in the West over the past decades. Each thus deserves a separate analysis.
The excitement triggered in Western Brotherhood milieus by the fall of the Mubarak regime and the subsequent rise to power of the Brotherhood in its country of birth, the most populous and still one of the most culturally and politically influential countries in the Arab world, cannot be overemphasized. From the onset of these events, Western Brotherhood activists of all origins, and not just Egyptians, mobilized as fully as they could to support in any possible way the Egyptian Brotherhood’s historic effort. It overshadowed all other causes, and it generated so much enthusiasm that some Western Brothers dropped their guard and, after years of denial, proudly admitted their Brotherhood affiliations.
But for many Western-based Brothers of Egyptian origin, the fall of the Mubarak regime meant they were finally allowed to return to their native country after a long exile in the West. In this regard, the story of Kamal Helbawy, profiled in chapter 3, is emblematic but hardly unique. Highlighting a few of those examples will provide some indication of the strength of the links between Western Brotherhood milieus and the mother group in Egypt, despite statements to the contrary by many Western Brothers. It is significant that several individuals who for years had led Western Muslim organizations (and often denied any link to the Brotherhood) jetted to Egypt to occupy senior positions in the Brotherhood–led government as soon as the group rose to power.
Arguably one of the most conspicuous of the returnees is Ayman Aly. In the early 1990s Aly moved from Egypt to the Balkans, where he was said to be active in humanitarian work during the various conflicts then plaguing the region. He served as director of the Taibah International Aid Agency, whose Bosnian branch was designated by the U.S. government in 2004 as a financer of terrorism, before settling in the peaceful Austrian town of Graz.5 In Graz, a well-known center of activity of the Egyptian Brotherhood in Europe since the early 1970s, when Yussuf Nada spent time there, Aly became the head of the al Nur mosque, which serves as the headquarters of the Liga Kultur Verein für Multikulturellen Brückenbau, one of the most prominent organizations of the Austrian Brotherhood milieu.6 Aly also occupied a prominent position at the European level, serving as FIOE’s secretary general and focusing on expanding FIOE’s activities in eastern Europe. Despite often denying having links to the Brotherhood, in August 2012 Aly was appointed to Egypt’s presidential Advisory Council and served as one of Morsi’s closest advisors on foreign affairs until the downfall of the regime.7
Similarly, prominent examples are provided by two members of the el Haddad family. Essam, the father, is the founder of Islamic Relief, which he started when he was studying for his doctorate in medicine in Birmingham, England, in the 1980s. Essam also occupied various positions in the Egyptian Brotherhood, serving as a member of its Guidance Bureau. In 2012, when still serving as chair of Islamic Relief Worldwide’s board of trustees, Essam was appointed as an advisor on foreign affairs to Morsi.8 Essam’s son Gehad, who grew up between Egypt and the United Kingdom, served as the Brotherhood’s media spokesman in 2013.9 Both Essam and Gehad were arrested after the fall of the Morsi regime. After 2013 Essam’s other son, Abdullah, became one of main spokespeople for the Brotherhood in London.
But the examples of Western Brothers who served in the Morsi government are plentiful—and it should be noted that Morsi himself had spent seven years in California in the 1980s, pursuing his doctorate in engineering and teaching as an assistant professor at California State University, Northridge.10 The group’s reliance on them at such a crucial juncture is unsurprising, as many Western Brothers possessed personal connections to Western elites and better communication skills than most members of the Egyptian Brotherhood. It is therefore logical that their influence was particularly evident in the Morsi government’s foreign relations apparatus, where the Brotherhood desperately needed skilled communicators who knew how to interact with and persuade wary Western interlocutors. Individuals like Ayman Aly, Essam el Haddad, or Wael Haddara, who had occupied leadership positions in various Brotherhood-leaning organizations in Canada before returning to Egypt in 2012 to serve as senior campaigner for Morsi,11 had a much better sense of which chords to strike when speaking to Western audiences than did the Brothers who had never left Egypt.
Despite the Brotherhood’s best efforts, the Morsi government lasted only one year. On June 30, 2013, millions of Egyptians filled the streets to protest it; days later, Morsi was removed from power by the military, paving the way for the beginning of the regime of General Abdul Fatah al-Sisi. The reasons for this stunning development are plentiful, complex, and beyond the scope of this book.12 Suffice it to say that the task undertaken by the Brothers—to manage a transition to democracy with an economy in tatters—were daunting. The Brothers also faced the hostility of the country’s powerful bureaucratic and military establishment, and much of the business community. But they made several mistakes of their own, from refusing to share powers with other groups to appointing inexperienced (if not flat-out incompetent) officials from their cadres to strategic positions.13 More broadly, at that delicate juncture of the country’s political life, they failed to come up with a concrete vision for Egypt and unite Egyptians, thereby losing the support of many of those who had voted for the group in the hope of change. In short, in the words of Alison Pargeter, the Brotherhood displayed a “fundamental inability to turn itself from a semi-clandestine opposition movement into a credible political actor capable of dealing with the challenges that were being thrown at it.”14
Morsi’s removal from power triggered a chain of events that culminated in the forced removal of Brotherhood members and supporters who had occupied two Cairo squares, Rabaa al Adawiya and Nahda. It was a bloodbath—though the total is in dispute, at a minimum hundreds died—that shocked the Brotherhood well beyond Egypt, in one of the biggest tragedies in its tormented history. The coup also triggered a new phase, eerily reminiscent of the crackdown implemented by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s: the outlawing of the organization, mass imprisonments of its members, summary trials, and poor detention conditions.
The crackdown also involved several Western Brotherhood members, many of whom were detained in poor conditions that in some cases, according to various human rights organizations, amounted to upright torture; charged; and subjected to in summary trials. This behavior on the part of the new Egyptian regime drew stern condemnation and considerable pressure from the Western countries where the detained Brotherhood activists had gained citizenship. The imprisonment of individuals such as Khaled el Qazzaz,15 Mohammed Sultan,16 Ibrahim Halawa,17 and a few other Western-born or -raised Egyptian Brotherhood activists or children of prominent members of the group also led to a mobilization of Western Brotherhood milieus, which used the stories of these individuals to rally Western Muslim communities, human rights organizations, and public opinion against the Egyptian government. While in prison and after being released, they became causes célèbres for the Western Brotherhood milieu, embodiments of the injustices suffered by the group as a whole and of the brutality of the Sisi regime.
The crackdown caused many Brotherhood members to flee Egypt. While many settled in Qatar and in Turkey, which has since become the undisputed center of gravity of the Brotherhood (and not just of its Egyptian branch), others found refuge in the West.18 The latter settled in countries where they could claim political asylum or where, through previous connections, they already had citizenship or a residency permit. They are not very numerous, and they tend to be scattered throughout the West. But since the fall of the Morsi regime, London—which, to be sure, for decades has had a very large Brotherhood presence, both Egyptian and not—has become a major hub for the Egyptian Ikhwan.
The London-based cluster includes some of the group’s most senior members, as well as some junior activists. Particularly noteworthy among the former is Ibrahim Mounir, who has long occupied one of the top positions in the Brotherhood’s International Organization. Mounir, who has lived in Britain for almost forty years, is also the general supervisor of Risalat al Ikhwan, the Brotherhood’s official magazine published in London. Less senior but arguably more publicly active is Mohammed Soudan, the former foreign relations secretary of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Brotherhood’s political party, and a longtime Brotherhood member. Soudan was able to fly out of Cairo in August 2013, a few days after Egyptian authorities began arresting Brotherhood members, thanks to a personal connection at Cairo airport and a five-year British visa he had attained though his position in the FJP.19
These and other senior officials are supported by a small cadre of younger Brotherhood members, many of whom are students in various British universities. Initially the official spokesperson for the Brotherhood in the United Kingdom was Mona el Qazzaz, Khaled’s sister. After a few months, the position was given to Abdullah el Haddad, the son of Islamic Relief founder Essam.20 The London cluster runs a media campaign that targets both traditional media, where they seek to provide their viewpoint to the many British and international media outlets based in London, and social media. Some of these activities are run out of the Cricklewood offices of World Media Service (WMS), a company incorporated by Brotherhood member Mohammed Ghanem in 1993.21
The London cluster is an important cog in the machine that the Egyptian Brotherhood has been trying to re-create outside of the country and coordinates with members operating in Turkey, Qatar, and the many other countries where the organization’s exiles have settled. This global network engages in a broad array of activities, from filing legal challenges against the Egyptian regimes in various national and international courts to political lobbying, from providing support to individual Brothers seeking to escape from Egypt to organizing protests to maintain global attention to their cause.
As is true of most aspects of the Brotherhood, the post-Rabaa global network has two faces, one visible and one not. Most of the individuals driving it are core Egyptian Brotherhood members, and while their concerns over the future of democracy in Egypt may be genuine, their aims are largely those of supporting their group. Yet most of the groups they run use names that invoke democracy and human rights, purposely omitting any reference to the Brotherhood. Moreover, these ad hoc organizations often include as their most visible members a few individuals who are not Brothers, arguably a tactic used to deflect accusations of being simply appendages to the Brotherhood. But as the imagery (the ubiquitous yellow flags with the Rabaa four fingers in black) and slogans adopted at most of their events clearly show, the Brotherhood’s imprint on them is dominant.22 Moreover, a deeper analysis of the themes (like the periodically organized global “tweetstorms” using hashtags such as #rememberRabaa), timing, and advertising methods of the activities organized by these organizations, together with an investigation of who sits on their boards, clearly displays a high level of connectivity among them and with Brotherhood milieus.
Dynamics similar to those seen in Egypt, at least when it comes to the mobilization of Western Brotherhood milieus, are also visible in Tunisia. Before the unexpected fall of the Ben Ali regime and its surge to power, al Nahda had been de facto a movement in exile since its establishment in 1981, when it was called Movement of the Islamic Trend (Mouvement de la tendance islamique, MTI).23 Indeed, whereas the Egyptian Brotherhood had seen many of its members spend time in the West but had always maintained its core structure, leadership, and active membership inside Egypt, most of their Tunisian counterparts spent the better part of the two decades preceding the Arab Spring outside of Tunisia. Starting with its charismatic leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, who found asylum in London in 1989 after being sentenced to life in prison in Tunisia, the bulk of Nahda’s leadership had long settled outside of Tunisia—mostly in European countries (primarily Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Sweden).
Exactly as the Egyptian Brothers had done, as soon as the so-called Jasmine Revolution started, al Nahda’s milieus throughout the West began to mobilize. And while some stayed in the West and provided support in various ways from afar, most returned to Tunisia. The image of Ghannouchi’s triumphant return to Tunis, welcomed by thousands of supporters, captured only part of the momentous feeling that accompanied those days.
During his almost two decades in London, Ghannouchi had become a mainstay of Europe’s Islamist milieus, forging close ties to Brotherhood leaders from other countries and becoming something of a spiritual leader for Western Brothers. While some supporters have claimed that life in the West had an impact on his thinking on various political matters, starting with the relationship between Islam and democracy, Ghannouchi never fully immersed himself in British life, barely learning English and focusing his hopes and thinking mainly on Tunisia.24
On the other hand, the London days clearly had an impact on younger members of the Ghannouchi household. His three daughters became active in various Brotherhood-related initiatives, mostly focused on the West, in the early twenty-first century and continued their involvement as the Arab Spring arrived, this time focusing mostly on Tunisia. One of them, Yusra Ghannouchi, became the international spokesperson for al Nahda and a member of its External Relations Committee.25 Soumaya Ghannouchi, who had become a well-known organizing figure of the protests in Britain against the 2003 Iraq War and a frequent contributor to the Guardian and Huffington Post, became one of her father’s closest advisors upon moving to Tunisia.26 Following a trend common in Brotherhood milieus, Soumaya’s husband, Rafik Abdesselem Bouchlaka, was appointed as Tunisia’s foreign minister in the Nahda-led government. The move sparked ridicule and accusations of nepotism within Nahda circles, where Bouchlaka’s limited practical experience in foreign affairs was also criticized.
Ghannouchi’s third daughter, Intissar Kherigi, remained mostly in Europe. A longtime FEMYSO board member, Kherigi became a frequent commentator on Tunisian affairs, usually without mentioning the fact that she was the daughter of al Nahda’s leader (an omission made easier by her choice to go by Ghannouchi’s less recognizable familial surname).27 In the early days of the revolution, for example, she appeared on BBC World TV and was introduced only as a “Tunisian activist and a specialist in human rights in Tunisia.” She proceeded to attack the interim Tunisian government as “completely discredited” and praised “the many opposition parties who are out there, some of whom are in exile, who have fought for democracy for a long time and who are willing to come forward and form a united government together.”28 Similarly, in November 2011 she testified before the British Parliament and began, “I am speaking as a British Tunisian, who has long been active in the struggle for human rights and democracy in Tunisia.”29 Her affiliation with al Nahda and Ghannouchi appeared only in the printed minutes.
Kherigi’s approach has been fairly common among activists close to the Brotherhood milieu, on matters related and not related to the Arab Spring. Omitting, downplaying, obfuscating, and in some cases flatly denying their involvement with the Brotherhood are tactics frequently employed by Brotherhood-linked activists when they engage with Western audiences. In interviews, meetings, and debates, they tend to present themselves simply as ordinary Tunisians, Egyptians, Syrians, or Libyans, or, when dealing with issues related to Islam in the West, ordinary Western Muslims, expressing the voice of the people. This mild deception, together with the meticulous building of connections and the development of sophisticated media operations, has helped position the Western Brothers to be mostly likely to be chosen as the “ordinary citizens” the media would interview or lawmakers would call to testify.
Aside from Ghannouchi’s daughters, several other London-based Nahda activists returned to Tunisia after the Jasmine Revolution and played a major role in the group’s rebirth in the country. One of them was Lotfi Zitoun, who served as senior advisor in the al Nahda government. Equally important was Said Ferjani, a close confidant of Ghannouchi who had been deeply involved in the transnational Brotherhood in the years before the revolution. Ferjani, in fact, along with Kamal Helbawy and a handful of senior Brotherhood leaders from various countries, had been one of the founders of the Muslim Association of Britain, where he worked as head of policy, media, and public relations. He also served as chair of Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB), a government-funded advisory body aimed at improving British Muslim institutions through self-regulation. Through these experiences, Ferjani acquired invaluable skills in dealing with Western media and political leaders—skills he used after the revolution, when he became one of the main spokespeople for al Nahda.30
Though the United Kingdom was a major hub for senior al Nahda leaders between 1990 and 2010, the historical role played by France in the formation of al Nahda cannot be overemphasized. As a result of the strong historical and linguistic ties between France and Tunisia, French universities have traditionally been the primary destination for Tunisian graduate students, including many of the founders of MTI/al Nahda who would later occupy prominent positions in the postrevolutionary governments. Chief among them is Hamadi Jebali, who served as Tunisia’s prime minister from 2011 to February 2013. In the 1970s Jebali had pursued engineering studies in Paris. It was there, he recounted in an interview, that he became close to Moncef Ben Salem, Salah Karkar, and other Tunisian students who would come to play fundamental roles in Tunisian Islamism: “We started to organize there, particularly after we received a visit for the first time by Cheikh Rached Ghannouchi.”31 After finishing his studies in Paris, Jebali became president of Movement of the Islamic Trend.
Al Nahda’s experience in power was brief. In 2014, after various high-profile assassinations triggered a political crisis, the Nahda-led government voluntarily stepped down, giving way to new elections in which the group did not perform as well as it had done previously. Nonetheless, al Nahda’s government came to a significantly less dramatic end than the Egyptian Brotherhood. Rather than being overthrown by military interventions and violence, it was simply ousted through the ballot box, a testament to the relatively sound state of the young Tunisian democratic experiment. By the same token, al Nahda demonstrated a remarkable acceptance of democratic outcomes, neither attempting to unduly cling to power nor seeking to retake it in any way beyond those allowed by the democratic system.32 Although marred by endemic economic problems, widespread discontent, and occasional jihadist violence, the story of post–Arab Spring Tunisia is one of relative success, including in its model of the controversial relationship between Islamists and democracy.
The dynamics have been very different in Libya, where, unlike in Tunisia, a bloody civil conflict has plunged the country into anarchy since early 2011. Like its Tunisian counterpart, the Libyan branch of the Brotherhood barely existed as a force inside the country at the onset of the Arab Spring, having been virtually wiped out by the Muammar al-Qaddafi regime in a crackdown that began in the 1970s.33 It operated de facto as a movement in exile, with a presence in various Arab Gulf countries and in the West. Libyan Brothers were scattered throughout various Western countries but had formed particularly large clusters in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Ireland, and Switzerland.34
It was in Switzerland that the exiled leaders of the Libyan Brotherhood met in late January 2011 to discuss the group’s position on the revolution that, at the time, appeared about to engulf their native country. They gathered in Zurich, the adoptive city of Suleiman Abdelkader, at the time general overseer of the Libyan Brotherhood.35 The consensus was that, in typical Brotherhood style, the group should support the protests but not a full-scale revolution: an ambiguous position dictated by the uncertainty of the outcome of the protests and by the Brotherhood’s desire not to jeopardize the constructive relationship it had created with the regime since Qaddafi’s son, Saif al Islam, had started a dialogue with the group around 2005.36
However, less than three weeks later, after it had become apparent that the revolution was in full force and had a solid chance to topple the regime, the Brotherhood met again in Switzerland and fully endorsed it. Once it decided to throw its weight behind the revolution, the Libyan Brotherhood employed the superior political and mobilization skills that characterize Brotherhood branches throughout the world. Given its limited presence inside Libya, the Brothers could not establish a fighting force that could compete with some of the more powerful militias that formed in the heyday of the revolution (and that still in effect rule the country today). Many Brothers, including those who returned from the West, participated in the fighting, whether individually or with small Brotherhood militias, but they always attached themselves to other groups. In many cases the militia to which the Brothers decided to hitch their wagon had jihadist tendencies, in some cases with some not-so-loose affiliations to al Qaeda. This tactic has led some, including a number of governments in the region, to accuse the Libyan Brothers of working with terrorist groups and to argue that the line that separates the Brotherhood from terrorism is a thin one.
Though the Brothers’ small numbers prevented them from playing a major military role in revolutionary Libya, politically they were able to punch well above their weight. From the onset, the Brothers managed to attract the support of the governments of Qatar and Turkey, which provided them with substantial funding and political backing.37 The Brothers also began to establish a web of alliances with domestic forces from a range of political and religious affiliations. These remarkable political skills enabled them to get a seat at every table that matters, starting with the National Transitional Council (NTC), and to exert a disproportionate influence in the political life of Libya during the final days of Qaddafi and in the years that followed his death.
During that time Western-based leaders of the Libyan Brotherhood have taken up some of the most prominent positions in the group and in the Libyan government. For example, the group’s new leader—Bashir al Kebti, elected shortly after the revolution—had lived in the United States for more than thirty years, working as an accountant.38 And the important position of NTC’s minister of economy was held by Abdullah Shamia, who joined the Brotherhood as a student in the United States.39 Various prominent Libyan Brothers had ties to Ireland, where they held important positions within the Irish Muslim community before returning to Libya.40
Over the decades, however, the largest and most influential cluster of Libyan Brothers has lived in Britain, most in Manchester but with another sizable group in London. One of the pioneers of the Libyan Brotherhood in the United Kingdom is Ashur Shamis, who has lived in exile in the country since 1971. Shamis was one of the cofounders of the Muslim Welfare House, the institution mentioned by Helbawy as one of the first created by the Brotherhood in London, and was heavily involved in the British Brotherhood milieu.41 As the Qaddafi regime fell, Shamis returned to Libya and became an advisor with the transitional government in Libya.
Other prominent British-based Libyan Brothers include Abdel Latif Karmous, a Manchester-based member of the group’s Shura Council; Mohamed Gaair, the group’s spokesperson;42 Mohamed Abdul Malek, the group’s representative in Europe and a prominent leader of the Manchester Muslim community who became much more widely known in the aftermath of the May 2017 Manchester suicide bombing, which was carried out by a young Manchester native of Libyan descent;43 Salam Sheikhi, member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research;44 and El Amin Belhaj, one of the cofounders and the first president of the Muslim Association of Britain and the brother of Abdel Hakim Belhaj, one of the most influential military commanders of post-Qaddafi Libya.45
Like their brethren in Egypt (and in Syria, Yemen, and all the countries affected, in various ways, by the Arab Spring), operating in the West for decades gave the Libyan Brothers a great advantage once the Arab Spring began. All Brotherhood branches could mobilize and leverage the many contacts they had managed to establish over time with important Western policy and opinion makers; travel freely around the world with the Western passports many of them had obtained; and hone the diplomatic and communication skills necessary to operate at the political heights to which the Arab Spring had suddenly launched them.
While the experience and presence in the West of many members had a major impact on various national branches of the Brotherhood during the Arab Spring, the opposite is also true: the Arab Spring significantly affected Western Brotherhood milieus. And while it is difficult and definitely premature to assess what this impact has been, the negative effects seem to outweigh the positive.
During the early days of the Arab Spring, the positive energy emanating from Tunisia, Egypt, and other Arab countries galvanized the Western Brothers. It also led many in the West, from policy makers to Muslim communities, to see the Brotherhood as a positive model to embrace and as the wave of the future. Even though the developments in the Arab world quickly dispelled that optimism, the connections made by the Brothers during those years with a variety of Western interlocutors, from high-ranking government officials to those in the media, from human rights organizations to large foundations, constitute an important asset that can provide leverage in the future.
Yet there appear to be many negative repercussions of the Arab Spring for the Western Brotherhood (even more complex and arguably different from country to country than those for the Brotherhood in the Arab world). First, the departure of so many experienced and charismatic leaders for their countries of origin left many Western Brotherhood milieus depleted of human capital. A document published in 2013 by the Cordoba Foundation, a prominent organization of the British Brotherhood milieu, argues: “Prior to the Arab Spring, there was a political apparatus in the UK regulating and coordinating, albeit quite loosely, the work of the Islamic movements but that is no longer the case although the need of such an apparatus now is more than ever.”46 While the phenomenon affected various countries differently, a similar analysis can be applied to several.
Arguably even more serious is the effect on younger Western activists of the return to their home countries of so many leaders of the Western Brotherhood’s milieu. While never denying their understandable passion for developments in their countries of origin, since the early 1990s most Western Brotherhood pioneers had expressed a keen interest in Islam in the West, often portraying themselves as the de facto representatives of Western Muslims. Yet at the first opportunity, many of these leaders left the West for good, and those who stayed devoted all their energies to events abroad. Seeing their actions, many younger activists, most of whom are Western-born and seek to prioritize developments in the West, felt somewhat betrayed. A good number of them, whether they were directly involved in organizations of the milieu or simply sympathizers, were left disenchanted with both the milieu’s leaders and its ideology.47 Arguably, these developments have decreased the Brothers’ popularity both among Western Islamists and in the larger Western Muslim population.
In some cases, these often-overlapping dynamics of human capital depletion and “abandonment” involve not first-generation Brotherhood pioneers but individuals who have grown up in the West and were touted as future leaders of Muslim communities in their adoptive countries. A telling case is that of Osama al Saghir, the son of a prominent al Nahda leader. The al Saghirs moved to Italy when Osama was eleven, and his father ran one of Rome’s most influential mosques (al Huda, in the Centocelle neighborhood).48 In 2006, at age twenty-two, al Saghir was elected president of the Young Muslims of Italy, the youth organization of the Italian Brotherhood milieu that Khalid Chaouki had headed earlier (see chapter 10).
In that decade, thanks to his intelligence and charming personality, al Saghir became a fairly well-known public figure, routinely interviewed by Italian media on various issues related to Islam and Muslim integration in the country. He was particularly vocal on the issue of changing the country’s famously restrictive citizenship laws, which prevent most individuals who do not have Italian ancestry from becoming citizens even if they were born or have spent decades in the country. In 2009 al Saghir gave an interview in which he warned about the consequences of such policies, even linking them to jihadist radicalization. “The majority of young Muslims have grown up in Italy,” he said, “but very few have obtained Italian citizenship and for this reason have a distorted view of democracy. I fear the risk of a serious identitarian turn among young Muslims, because if one does not belong to a nation, then he belongs to a religious community, where it is easier to pay attention to some madman who talks about Italians being infidels, or to political groups that reject democracy.”49
In 2011 al Saghir received Italian citizenship through naturalization. Yet in that very same year he decided to run for the Tunisian elections as one of al Nahda’s candidates in Italy. He, together with the daughter of another Rome-based Nahda leader, was elected, confirming al Nahda’s dominance among the Tunisian electorate in Italy.50 Some among both Italian opinion makers and the Muslim community have accused al Saghir of hypocrisy—first decrying the potential lack of attachment to Italy a restrictive citizenship policy might trigger, and then running in Tunisian elections (shortly after receiving Italian citizenship) as soon as the unexpected opportunity arose.51
But, more broadly, it can be argued that the deepest impact on Western Brotherhood milieus came from the outcome of the Arab Spring—and particularly the failure of the Brotherhood in Egypt and, to a lesser degree, Tunisia to retain the support of large segments of the population and govern effectively. Many Brothers, in the East as well as in the West, have reacted to the downfall of the Brotherhood (irrespective of how they interpret the vicissitudes that led to it) with introspection often bordering on self-doubt.52 The statement from one of the spiritual leaders of the Western Brotherhood, Rashid Ghannouchi, that after the experience of the Arab Spring, his movement has “left political Islam” to “enter Muslim democracy”53—a shift whose contours are uncertain but that clearly indicates doubt in the traditional dogmas of Brotherhood-style Islamism—reveals the massive soul-searching taking place within the milieu.
For many Western Muslim activists close to the Brotherhood, the Arab Spring has been a major blow to their intellectual confidence and has triggered reexamination, “the opportunity to reconsider simplistic ideological perspectives that ‘Islam is the solution.’ ”54 As Amghar and Khadiyatoulah cogently put it, “The all-encompassing approach of the MB—the idea of an Islamic panacea as a solution to all the problems for Muslims—clashes with the concrete experiences of the MB and is revealed to be ineffective. The European Brotherhood movement therefore suffers from the paradoxes of both its pre– and post–Arab Spring ideology.”55 Similarly, Dilwar Hussain, a prominent British Muslim activist with years of experience in Islamist milieus and a longtime proponent of liberalizing the movement in the West, argues that “a more open and embracing vision of who we are, and what Islam means to us, will be realised [once] there is a shift towards a post-Islamist paradigm among activists in the West.” “But can this happen?” asks Hussain. “I would argue that it must.”56
While the Arab Spring’s developments brought many changes to the internal dynamics of the Western Brotherhood, the seismic geopolitical shifts it triggered had an equally great impact on the milieu. Indeed, the decade that began in 2010 has been characterized by massive changes in the ideological leanings and political positioning of many countries in the Middle East and North Africa. For the Western Brothers, aside from the developments in their countries of origin, the shift with the greatest impact has been in the policy on the Muslim Brotherhood among most of the wealthy countries of the Arab Gulf, historically the biggest financial backers of the movement both in the East and in the West.
While each Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) country has its own specific history with the Brotherhood, most of them began some kind of cooperation with the group as early as the 1950s and 1960s, when they gave refuge to Brothers fleeing persecution from Egypt, Syria, and other countries of the region. Once in the Arabian Peninsula, some Brothers thrived in business, accumulating fortunes that they drew on to help fund the organization in their home countries. Others worked for the local governments, which were investing their new and massive oil fortunes in building the bureaucracies that their previously underdeveloped countries had lacked. Particularly important was the Brothers’ role in developing the education systems of those countries, thereby gaining influence over the political and religious thinking of the region’s future generations. Finally, other Brothers, as seen in the case of Kamal Helbawy, were hired to run the organizations such as MWL, WAMY, and the many charitable entities that sought to spread worldwide a blend of the politically minded brand of Islam adopted by the Brothers and the ultraconservative interpretation common in the Gulf (often known as Wahhabism, from Saudi Arabia’s version).
This relationship between the Brothers and the Gulf countries of cooperation and mutual cooptation was based on a similar (though not identical) approach to the faith, but some mutual suspicions always remained. In particular, most Gulf countries have always been wary of, and in some cases flatly prohibited, the Brothers’ establishing too strong an influence within their borders. While lavishly supporting their efforts outside the region, the Gulf monarchies, to varying degrees, perceived the Brothers as a threat to their power, as a potentially subversive force competing with them for their citizens’ loyalty. While the dynamics varied from country to country, these fears intensified significantly with the arrival of the Arab Spring, as what appeared then to be the Brothers’ unstoppable rise to power came to be seen in the royal palaces of all GCC countries—with one notable exception—as a vital threat to the survival of the established order of the regime and the entire region.
These complex dynamics have been very much at play in the region’s largest and most powerful country, Saudi Arabia, for the past decades. Brothers from Egypt and many other Arab countries have been present in the kingdom since the 1950s, developing relationships that have shaped the country, the group, the region, and, without exaggeration, the development of Islam worldwide ever since. Cracks in the relationship appeared in 1991, when important segments of the Brotherhood supported Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, and throughout the 1990s, when the Brotherhood-influenced Sahwa movement challenged the legitimacy of the Saudi monarchy.57
After the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, the relationship grew even more strained, but the Saudi state had no unified response. Part of the Saudi establishment began to seriously reconsider the support the kingdom had historically provided to the group. Most famously, Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, then minister of the interior, accused the Muslim Brotherhood of being the “source of all evils” and the root of many problems in the Arab world.58 Still, other parts of the Saudi establishment continued their financial support of the group or, in any case, refused to crack down on it. Western Brotherhood organizations, for decades among the primary beneficiaries of Saudi largesse, still received substantial financial backing from various sources in the kingdom
But the Brotherhood’s victory in Egypt and, to a lesser degree, Tunisia triggered widespread fears among the Saudi ruling class that the group could destabilize the entire region, where the Saudis saw themselves as a status quo power.59 Partially owing to what were, in hindsight, less than strategic statements by Egyptian Brotherhood leaders that hinted at their desire to undermine Saudi Arabia, the Saudis further perceived the Brothers as competing with them for the allegiance of the country’s citizens and, therefore, as a threat to the survival of the Saudi state.60 These developments culminated with the elevation of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (commonly known as MBS), a young and ambitious leader determined to guide an economic, political, and cultural revolution within Saudi Arabia. The Brotherhood had no role in MBS’s vision.
In March 2014 the Saudi government declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization and extended the designation to groups that resemble it “in ideology, word or action.”61 There followed a variety of measures aimed at eliminating the Brotherhood’s influence in the kingdom, from purging the group’s supporters from its academic institutions to removing books by Brotherhood authors from Saudi schools.62 The implementation of this new course on the Brotherhood has not been easy, for it requires reversing and undoing decades of cooperation and connections. Unsurprisingly, the policy has been applied at times inconsistently, as some sections of the Saudi nonstate establishment still engage in activities supportive of the Brotherhood.63 Yet overall it is clear that Saudi Arabia has become a hostile country for the Brothers. This development has had a direct impact on Western Brotherhood organizations. While some individual donors within the country still fund them, the amount of money flowing to the West from the Saudi state, the Saudi establishment, and many of its citizens has severely dwindled.
An even more aggressive approach toward the Brotherhood has been adopted by Saudi Arabia’s strategic partner in the region, the United Arab Emirates. Like Saudi Arabia, the UAE attracted scores of Brothers in the second half of the twentieth century, many of whom enriched themselves and played an important role in shaping the institutions of the nascent confederation. Distrust of the Brotherhood began in the 1990s, when the government started to perceive Islah, the domestic branch of the group, as a subversive threat, particularly in the poorer and more religiously conservative northern emirates.64
As in Saudi Arabia, the developments of the Arab Spring brought about a dramatic hardening of the Emirati attitude toward the Brotherhood, which led to the group’s designation as a terrorist organization. As in Saudi Arabia, fears of domestic and regional destabilization were largely responsible for this new approach. But the UAE’s hostility toward the Brotherhood, in comparison with Saudi Arabia’s, seems deeper and more ideologically based. High-ranking Emirati officials have consistently made the argument that the Brotherhood is the fountainhead of terrorism: in their eyes, the extremist group has provided the core ideology that jihadist groups have simply developed to its natural conclusion. “I do not accept the hijacking of the Islamic religion by takfiri groups,” Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash has repeatedly stated, explaining why the UAE banned the Brotherhood. “So we must begin to fight extremist ideology.”65
The Emiratis’ opposition to the group also appears to be more consistent and proactive than the Saudis’. Tellingly, in November 2014 the UAE government decided to include on its list of eighty-two designated terrorist organizations, along with groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State, not just the Muslim Brotherhood in general but also many Western Brotherhood entities. Indeed, the government blacklisted some of the leading Brotherhood-leaning organizations in the United Kingdom (Cordoba Foundation and MAB), United States (CAIR and MAS), Germany (IGD), France (UOIF), Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Belgium, and Finland. The list also included two transnational organizations linked to the Western Brotherhood milieu, FIOE and Islamic Relief.66
The UAE government’s decision shocked many in the West, from Brotherhood leaders and their supporters to governments. The full impact of the designation is difficult to assess. On one hand, no Western country has taken any measure against the organizations included on the list. On the contrary, some Western governments, particularly those of the United States and Sweden, protested with their Emirati counterparts, demanding—to no avail—that the organizations based in their countries be removed from the list.67 On the other hand, being labeled a terrorist organization by an Arab country that enjoys excellent credentials and relationships in the West has unquestionably brought negative attention to the various Western Brotherhood organizations named, arguably harming their credibility and prestige. And, without question, it has virtually eliminated the ability of Western Brotherhood organizations to fund raise in the UAE and made fund-raising more difficult throughout the Gulf.
While other GCC countries, with more or less enthusiasm, have followed the lead of Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the Brotherhood, the one notable exception has been Qatar. Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the Qatari government has not only maintained its ties to the global Muslim Brotherhood movement but has actually strengthened them. Qatari funds have gone to support the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, al Nahda in Tunisia, various Islamist forces (including but not limited to the Muslim Brotherhood) in Libya and Syria, Hamas in Palestine, and a broader array of Islamist groups throughout the world—in effect picking the side opposite to that favored by its GCC partners in every country. Whereas at the onset of the Arab Spring Saudi Arabia and the UAE became the self-appointed defenders of stability and continuity in the region, Qatar actively promoted Islamist-inspired regime change. And showing another important difference, Qatar opted for a policy of détente with Iran that clashed with the hard line chosen by the rest of the GCC.
The reasons for Qatar’s positions are complex. Without question, the deep historical links between the country’s leadership and the Muslim Brotherhood are a factor. The status of Qaradawi, who has called Qatar home since the 1960s and has played a key role in building the country’s religious education system while becoming a global theological and political celebrity (also thanks to the Qatar-funded and -based al Jazeera television channel), is just one of the many examples of the deep entrenchment of the Brotherhood in Qatari society.68 Yet, though the links between the Brotherhood and the ruling family might be somewhat deeper in Qatar, these dynamics are common throughout the Gulf.
The difference seems to lie in a policy that Courtney Freer calls “cooperative co-optation,” adopted by Qatar well before the Arab Spring.69 Since the mid-1990s Qatar has sought to challenge Saudi–Emirati hegemony in the region and become a competing regional player.70 Among its tactics to achieve this goal are strategic financial investments (including in the West), massive soft power (through al Jazeera and other media endeavors) and lobbying efforts, high-profile ventures to acquire maximum visibility (such as hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup), and strong military ties with the West (epitomized by the al Udeid Air Base, which hosts a massive U.S. military presence). But Qatar’s strategy also includes close cooperation with Islamist forces, mostly with ties to the Brotherhood.71 Simply put, the Qataris have made a calculated, strategic decision to use the Brotherhood as a tool to project geopolitical influence worldwide. As the Arab Spring began, and the Brothers initially appeared to have a winning hand, the Qataris doubled down on this policy.
This disagreement over policy on the Brotherhood (and Iran) has led to ever-increasing friction between Qatar and the other GCC countries. Tensions were already brewing in the first decade of the century, but following the Arab Spring they have escalated.72 The first public flare-up occurred in 2014 when Qaradawi delivered a sermon on Qatari state TV in which he described the UAE as “against Islam.”73 The incident spurred an outpouring of recriminations from other Gulf countries and led the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain to withdraw their ambassadors from Doha—an unprecedented move among GCC countries. Relations were somewhat patched up in the following months, but tensions resurfaced, in full force, in 2017. Once again Qatar stood accused of still supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and an array of Islamist forces that undermined the stability of the region, thereby violating the promises it had made to its GCC partners in 2014. The standoff culminated in June, when Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt decided to sever all ties with Qatar and impose a strict land, sea, and air blockade on the country.74 Such a step had never been taken before, and it triggered an extremely tense cold war between Qatar and the other Arab countries that has been fought on the fields of politics, diplomacy, trade, espionage, and public relations—but, at least to date, not on the battlefield.
How this situation will unfold remains, at the time of writing, to be seen. But the outcome has enormous implications for the Muslim Brotherhood, in the East (not the focus here) as well as the West. It is fair to say that since the beginning of the Arab Spring, Qatar has become the Western Brotherhood’s largest external sponsor. While the other Gulf countries, which for decades played a crucial role in the disproportionate growth of Western Brotherhood organizations by bankrolling them with immense sums, stopped their direct support and severely curtailed the ability of their citizens and private or semiprivate charities to provide funds to Western Brotherhood organizations, Qatar stepped in and increased its giving. Whether provided by the Qatari government directly, by organizations that are formally independent yet closely linked to the upper echelons of the Qatari establishment (e.g., the Qatar Charity or the Qatar Foundation), or by high-ranking members of the Qatari ruling family or government individually, Qatari funding has become the main financial backing of the Western Brotherhood.
A project overseen by the Qatar Charity (QC) clearly reveals these dynamics.75 Headed by Sheikh Hamad bin Nasser bin Jassim Al-Thani, a member of the Qatari ruling family, QC is the largest charitable organization in the country. It has also a long history of accusations of links to extremism. A classified U.S. intelligence cable in 2009, made public by Wikileaks, describes QC as “an entity of concern to the USG [United States government] due to some of its suspect activities abroad and reported links to terrorism,” adding that in March 2008 QC had been “listed as a priority III terrorism support entity (TSE) by the Interagency Intelligence Committee on Terrorism.”76 QC was also a member of the Union of Good, a transnational umbrella of charitable organizations linked to the Brotherhood and headed by Qaradawi that was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2008 for its alleged funding of Hamas.77 At the same time, QC, particularly over the past decade, has delivered hundreds of millions of dollars to indisputably humanitarian causes and has partnered with highly respected organizations such as UNICEF, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In 2015 QC launched a multimillion-dollar project called the Gaith Initiative to “introduce Islamic culture and strengthen its presence among Western communities in particular, and the world in general.”78 The initiative, widely publicized in the media, on QC’s website, and via a specific Twitter account, has since funded dozens of projects in various Western countries, from the construction of new mosques to providing support to local Muslim organizations, from interfaith dialogue to refugee relief. Among the first projects funded or cofunded are the opening of the first Islamic center in Luxembourg (which cost 2.2 million euros), as well as the first mosque in Slovenia (12 million euros).79
Most of the projects of the Gaith Initiative, as well as most QC activities in the West, have been run by its London office, Qatar Charity UK, located at a prestigious Mayfair address. In October 2017, while retaining the same board, address, and activities, QC UK changed its name to Nectar Trust, stating in documents filed with the Charity Commission that “the change in name will assist them to better meet the Charity’s mission, and objects, and make it easier to raise funds and form partnership with various government and non government organisations.”80 It may be no coincidence that this change was made only months after the blockade imposed on Qatar by the other Arab countries.
These documents filed with British authorities provide an interesting glimpse into Qatari funding in the West. The total income declared by the Nectar Trust for 2017 was close to twenty-eight million pounds, and in the same year it reported having spent more than eleven million pounds on charitable activities ranging from educational projects to organizing the Qatar-UK Business and Investment Forum. But some of its most significant support was given to a large number of new mosques/community centers in eight Western countries: France, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Australia, and the United States.
The annual report makes it clear that the recipients of the funds for Nectar’s Trust vast mosque-building project are almost exclusively individuals and organizations that belong to the Western Brotherhood milieu.81 Nectar Trust declares that it has three trustees, all of them European. Two, Mahfoudi Zaoui and Ayyoub Abouliaqin (who also serves as Nectar’s director general), are French-based and, as the Nectar documents indicate, are also trustees of a French-based company called Passerelles. The Nectar documents further indicate that Passerelles received some eight million pounds “for two community centre projects in Mulhouse and Strasburg during 2016/17.”
The background of the Nectar’s two French trustees reveals the Brotherhood links. Mahfoudi Zaoui is an Algerian-born pulmonologist who sits on the board of Al Wakf France, the UOIF’s financial arm (its twenty-six board members are selected by UOIF).82 He is based in Mulhouse, where Nectar Trust is funding, through Passerelles, an Islamic center Qatari media described as “the largest such facility in Europe,” strategically located on the border between France, Germany, and Switzerland.83 The center is managed by the Muslim Association of Alsace (AMAL), the local affiliate of the UOIF. Ayyoub Abouliaqin, the other French trustee of Nectar, has in the past served as secretary general of AMAL.84 Zaoui and Abouliaqin thus seem to be the conduits for Qatari money to the French Brotherhood milieu. And that funding goes well beyond the two above-mentioned projects in eastern France, reaching projects in Marseilles, Nantes, Villeneuve d’Ascq (the town where Mohamed Louizi and Omero Marongiu were active), and several other French cities and towns.85 QC has also historically provided financial support to IESH, the Western Brotherhood graduate school in Burgundy.86
Nectar’s third trustee, Mohammed Ibrahim, has a similar background in Italy. As Nectar documents state, Ibrahim is a trustee for UCOII, the public organization of the Italian Brotherhood milieu. Moreover, the Turin-based Ibrahim is also the treasurer of Alleanza Islamica (Islamic Alliance), the less high-profile organization of the Italian Brotherhood milieu that the UAE placed on its 2014 terror list.87 According to the Nectar report, the organization was planning to provide “905.188 BP [British pounds] to UCOII for projects in Italy during 2016/17.” It therefore appears that Ibrahim serves as a conduit for Qatari funds to Italian Brotherhood milieu organizations.
Qatar pays a great deal of attention to Italy. In 2016 the then president of UCOII, Florence-based Izzedin Elzir, proudly told Italian media that during the previous three years his organization secured “25 million euros in funds from the Qatar Charity.” This money, he added, was “used for the construction of 43 mosques, among which [are] the ones of Ravenna (the second largest in Italy), Catania, Piacenza, Colle Val d’Elsa, Vicenza, Saronno, Mirandola.”88 The list of projects, mostly new mosques, funded by Qatar is longer in Italy than in other Western countries. QC seems to have focused particularly on Sicily (eleven projects) and on small and midsize towns throughout the country.
This large influx of Qatari funds has been met with a mixed response in the West. Some politicians, commentators, and members of the Muslim community have criticized it, raising concerns that a country that many have accused of having, at best, an ambivalent relationship to various terrorist and extremist groups has been providing millions to organizations linked to Muslim Brotherhood, thereby enabling those groups to exert an enormous influence on the growing Western Muslim communities. Others have dismissed these concerns, arguing that they are baseless and sometimes claiming that they are motivated by political interests and Islamophobia.
Similar warnings have been voiced about Turkey, the other country that, over the past few years, has joined Qatar in providing significant support to Western Brotherhood organizations. Historically the Turkish state had been a major supporter of non-Islamist Muslim organizations operating in the Western countries where a Turkish diaspora existed. Aside from those organizations catering to Turkish ethnic-religious subgroups such as the Alevites and Kurds, Turkish Islam in the West had been traditionally characterized by competition between institutions promoted by Turkish Islamist organizations and the Diyanet—the Turkish governmental agency for religious affairs, which long supported a Turkish-centric yet moderate interpretation of Islam that emphasized the Kemalist strict separation of state and religion. The Islamist milieu was dominated by Millî Görüş, the Turkish sister organization of the Western Brotherhood that operated hundreds of mosques throughout Europe and strongly opposed Turkey’s secularism.89
With the rise to power of Reccip Tayip Erdogan and the AKP, these dynamics have changed radically. By around 2005, as the AKP gradually solidified its hold on power in Turkey, the Turkish government made significant changes to the Diyanet’s personnel and to its theological positions, which both became more Islamist.90 And corresponding to that domestic move was a new policy in the West: Millî Görüş and Diyanet, having viciously competed for decades, were in effect brought together, as personnel moved from one to the other and undertook many joint initiatives. In effect, the AKP government managed to bring under its control the two rival apparatuses that had vied for influence in the Turkish diaspora: one, Millî Görüş, because they had always shared deep personal and ideological links and the other, Diyanet, because the AKP now dominated domestic institutions back in Turkey. This policy has a number of aims, but arguably one of the most important is to persuade as large a segment as possible of the sizable Turkish population in the West to vote for the AKP—a strategy that, judging from how Turks in Europe have voted in recent years, has succeeded.
But lately the AKP’s attempts to exert influence on Western Muslim communities have gone beyond taking over Turkish diaspora organizations and extended to forming a close partnership with Western Brotherhood organizations. The links between Turkish Islamism and the Brotherhood are extensive and well documented. This book has provided examples of such connections, whether historical (see Helbawy’s anecdote on WAMY’s camp in Northern Cyprus in 197791) or financial, personal, and organizational (all demonstrated in the case of Ibrahim El Zayat, sketched in chapter 10). In short, despite some ideological differences, the Brotherhood and Turkish Islamism (whether represented by the AKP in Turkey or by Millî Görüş in the West) are fellow travelers. The relationship has been further cemented in recent years, as Erdogan has provided refuge to hundreds of Brotherhood members fleeing Egypt after the fall of the Morsi regime and Istanbul has become the new center of gravity for the global Muslim Brotherhood.
As a result of these changes, the Turkish government or nongovernmental organizations and financial institutions close to the government and the AKP have begun to provide ever-growing support to Western Brotherhood organizations. Whether in countries with large Turkish communities (such as Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands) or without them (United States, Italy), Western Brotherhood organizations have increasingly received Turkish funding, engaged in joint activities with Millî Görüş, and vocally expressed support and lobbied for the AKP government. The relationship between some Western Brotherhood organizations and the AKP has in some cases been so close that it has made many Western Muslim activists and even various members of the Brotherhood milieu uncomfortable, whether because of the AKP’s questionable reputation on democracy and human rights or because it constitutes an undue foreign influence on Muslim organizations supposedly focused on domestic matters.92
The question of how Western governments assess, engage with, and make decisions about Western Brotherhood milieus is complex, and it deserves a separate and much longer analysis.93 It is worth repeating here that no Western government has adopted anything even remotely close to a clearly articulated approach to identifying and assessing Western Brotherhood organizations, let alone coherent policies on how to view and engage them. Opinions and approaches vary dramatically not just from country to country, from government to government, from political group to political group, but often from individual official to individual official in the very same office.94
The reasons for this inconsistency are plentiful and often intertwined. Lack of information frequently plays a role, as institutions at times engage Western Brotherhood organizations because they do not possess information (whether they lack access to it or do not bother requesting it) that would give them a clearer picture of who their interlocutors are. Cases of high-profile politicians or governmental agencies endorsing, partnering with, or providing funds to Western Brotherhood organizations only to backtrack in embarrassment once they discovered the true identify of their partners are plentiful. With notable exceptions, knowledge on Western Brotherhood organizations is very limited throughout the West, for reasons that range from the movement’s complexity to the tendency of security agencies to devote little or no attention to them because they are not perceived as a security threat.
Often institutions engage with Western Brotherhood organizations when they possess sufficient information to make clear to them who their interlocutors are. Sometimes the institution (or the specific individual within the institution tasked with making that decision) finds the Western Brotherhood organization in question to be unproblematic, basically embracing what has been termed the optimist position on the Brotherhood. At other times the institution may hold the pessimist position yet still perceive engagement with the Western Brothers as a useful avenue to pursue a specific goal. It is not uncommon for these seemingly contradictory impulses to be at play at the same time within the same institution. For example, a ministry of the interior might find partnership with a Western Brotherhood organization unsuitable for integration projects but necessary to work on deradicalization.
Though it is daunting to juggle these different assessments and at times conflicting priorities, Western countries have been endeavoring to do so for the past three decades. The Arab Spring created some new dynamics. During its early days, many Western governments and institutions (in particular intelligence agencies and ministries of foreign affairs) reached out to Western Brothers to seek help in better understanding and communicating with the Brotherhood groups operating in the countries affected. While Western Brothers—leveraging their close connections to fellow Brothers in the Middle East and North Africa to establish friendly relations with Western institutions seeking to access them—have acted as gatekeepers for decades, the role obviously took on greater importance during the Arab Spring, as all Western nations rushed to better understand and, in most cases, build more solid relations with the groups that seemed to be gaining the upper hand throughout the region.
As the wave of the Brothers’ successes waned and in many countries the Arab Spring took a violent turn, Western attention shifted from Islamism to jihadism. By 2014, following the Brotherhood’s ouster in Egypt and Tunisia, the rise of the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS; after June 2014, simply “Islamic State”) and of other jihadist groups, together with the flow of Western foreign fighters to join them, became one of the top policy priorities of all Western administrations. No longer seen as the wave of the future, the Brotherhood took a backseat to jihadism in policy debates.
In attempting to insert themselves in this new phase of the post–Arab Spring debate, Western Brotherhood organizations have relied mainly on two different approaches. The first is on occasion to intercede, whether by leveraging their connections in the region or simply by making appeals to the kidnappers based on their common Islamic faith, to obtain the release of Western hostages detained by various jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq.
The second approach, which has significantly more relevance to policy, is to offer to help Western governments curtail the spread of sympathy for the Islamic State and other jihadist groups among young Western Muslims. Western governments, alarmed both by the unprecedented mobilization of thousands of their own citizens who joined jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq and by the wave of terrorist attacks that have hit Europe and North America since 2014, have been seeking ways to prevent radicalization and to deradicalize committed militants among their Muslim population. Replicating a dynamic that played out on a smaller scale during the height of the al Qaeda–linked attacks in the West a decade earlier, Western governments began to look for partners within Muslim communities that had the ability, legitimacy, and structure to help them. In several cases Western Brotherhood organizations, arguably sensing an opportunity to gain the legitimacy, contacts, and funds that often come to those who work on countering violent extremism (CVE), enthusiastically offered to partner with governments or create their own radicalization prevention programs.
The dynamics of Western Brotherhood organizations’ work on CVE vary from country to country. In the United Kingdom, for example, after the experiments early in the century in which various Islamist organizations were seen as crucial partners in Prevent, the country’s counterradicalization strategy, the government refused to partner with Brotherhood or any other Islamist group. In the United States, it has been organizations from the Brotherhood milieu that have refused to participate in the country’s limited domestic CVE, condemning it as discriminatory and unconstitutional (even though a handful of organizations of the milieu have applied for CVE federal funding).95 In various European countries, Brotherhood-linked organizations have enthusiastically applied for and, at times, received funding for radicalization prevention.
The decision-making process of Western governments in this area is, as usual, often inconsistent and influenced by myriad overlapping and at times contradictory factors. One unquestionably crucial element is the general assessment of the Brotherhood—whether it is perceived as part of the problem or as part of the solution, a force that favors violent radicalization or instead helps prevent it. That issue has been discussed in various parts of this book, emphasizing the complete lack of consensus among Western policy makers, including intelligence agencies. And it should be stressed that even those within the security establishment who see the Brotherhood as problematic are split on whether some small, tactical cooperation with them can be useful to counter jihadist radicalization.
The point on which security apparatuses, particularly in continental Europe, seem to agree is that the Brotherhood’s activities have a negative social impact. Many of these entities traditionally possess an institutional mandate broader than their U.K. and U.S. counterparts, as they are tasked with monitoring not just direct threats to national security but also more oblique forms of subversion that might threaten the democratic order. Because of their broader remit, they have long studied the Brotherhood’s presence within their jurisdictions and formed an opinion about it—almost invariably viewing it as suspicious if not unequivocally dangerous.
Germany is a good case in point. For example, the 2005 report from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, describes Brotherhood-influenced organizations operating in the country as “ ‘legalistic’ Islamist groups” that “represent an especial threat to the internal cohesion of our society.” It continues:
Among other things, their wide range of Islamist-oriented educational and support activities, especially for children and adolescents from immigrant families, are used to promote the creation and proliferation of an Islamist milieu in Germany. These endeavours run counter to the efforts undertaken by the federal administration and the Länder [states] to integrate immigrants. There is the risk that such milieus could also form the breeding ground for further radicalization.96
Belgium’s domestic intelligence agency, Sûreté de l’État, described the activities of Muslim Brotherhood offshoots in the country in similarly negative terms:
The Sûreté de l’État has been following the activities of the Internationalist Muslim Brothers in Belgium since 1982. The Internationalist Muslim Brothers have possessed a clandestine structure in Belgium for more than twenty years. The identity of the members is secret; they operate with the greatest discretion. They seek to spread their ideology within Belgium’s Muslim community and they aim in particular at young, second- and third-generation immigrants. In Belgium as in other European countries, they seek to take control of sports, religious, and social associations, and they seek to establish themselves as privileged interlocutors of national and even European authorities in order to manage Islamic affairs. The Muslim Brothers estimate that national authorities will increasingly rely on the representatives of the Islamic community for the management of Islam. Within this framework, they try to impose the designation of people influenced by their ideology in representative bodies. In order to do so they were very active in the electoral process for the members of the body for the management of Islam [in Belgium]. Another aspect of this strategy is to cause or maintain tensions in which they consider that a Muslim or a Muslim organization is a victim of Western values, hence the affair over the Muslim headscarf in public schools.97
The AIVD, the Netherlands’ domestic intelligence agency, provides an even more detailed analysis of Western Brotherhoods’ tactics and aims:
Not all Muslim Brothers or their sympathizers are recognisable as such. They do not always reveal their religious loyalties and ultra-orthodox agenda to outsiders. Apparently cooperative and moderate in their attitude to Western society, they certainly have no violent intent. But they are trying to pave the way for ultra-orthodox Islam to play a greater role in the Western world by exercising religious influence over Muslim immigrant communities and by forging good relations with relevant opinion leaders: politicians, civil servants, mainstream social organizations, non-Islamic clerics, academics, journalists and so on. This policy of engagement has been more noticeable in recent years, and might possibly herald a certain liberalisation of the movement’s ideas. It presents itself as a widely supported advocate and legitimate representative of the Islamic community. But the ultimate aim—although never stated openly—is to create, then implant and expand, an ultra-orthodox Muslim bloc inside Western Europe.98
While these are views published by intelligence agencies in official reports meant to inform policy makers and the general public, in recent years similar assessments have shaped the outcome of specific court cases in various European countries, further indicating that security establishments consider the Brotherhood’s positions to be incompatible with democracy—and that the courts have in many cases accepted this position. In a telling case, an Austrian court decided on the petition of the wife of Ayman Aly, the former FIOE leader who left Graz to serve as an advisor in the Morsi government, as mentioned above.99 In one document, the court summarized the views of the security services as follows:
The Muslim Brotherhood is not institutionalized under this name in Austria; however, it characterizes the public depiction of Islam through its intellectual and personal strength. The Muslim Brotherhood does not maintain membership registers; its members are kept secret in all countries to protect them from being identified by the authorities. Nevertheless, there is an accurate set of rules within the Muslim Brotherhood stating what is allowed and what is banned. As soon as loyalty is pledged, all instructions needs to be implemented. There are distinct categories of supporters who have pledged loyalty—from sympathisers to full members.
The court’s assessment of the Brotherhood’s goals and compatibility with the Austrian state and society continued: “The political system aimed at [by the Muslim Brotherhood] is reminiscent of a totalitarian system, which guarantees neither the sovereignty of people nor the principles of freedom and equality.” It declared, “Such a fundamental position is incompatible with the legal and social norms of the Republic of Austria.”
The court expressed its views on one of the core organizations of the Austrian Muslim Brotherhood milieu in greater detail: “The Liga Kultur Verein für multikulturellen Brückenbau in Graz is an association of the Muslim Brotherhood, insofar as it is allowed to spread only their ideology, which in its core contradicts the Western democratic understanding of coexistence, equality of men and women, the political order, and the fundamental principles of the Constitution of the Republic of Austria.” It was due mostly to her involvement in the Liga Kultur that the court turned down the petition of Ali’s wife to obtain Austrian citizenship. In doing so it stated that “owing to her close relationship to or membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, the First Applicant [Soha Ghonem] cannot accept those rules of the Republic of Austria which are contrary to the divine order of the Islamic laws; thus, she cannot provide assurance for the assumption that she actually affirms the Republic and that she is a threat neither to public peace, order, and security nor to the interests mentioned in art. 8 sec. 2 ECHR.”
A similar view was expressed by a German court in 2017 when it turned down the application for naturalization of a Palestinian man who was active in Brotherhood milieus in Germany. While the man possessed all other “naturalization requirements,” he lacked, in the court’s opinion, the “required constitutional loyalty.” The court explicitly stated that the man’s nearness to the Brotherhood was reason enough to find him unsuitable for German citizenship, because the Brotherhood and its affiliated organizations pursued “anticonstitutional aspirations.”100
Despite these commonalities among continental European countries, none has yet reached a consistent assessment of the Western Brotherhood or its impact on social cohesion. The one country that has made a systematic attempt to do so is the United Kingdom. In 2014 then prime minister David Cameron ordered a government-wide review of “the philosophy, activities, impact and influence on UK national interests, at home and abroad, of the Muslim Brotherhood and of government policy towards the organisation.”101 Given the many areas in which the Brotherhood has an impact, this review entailed pulling together knowledge from a wide range of entities within the government, from the Foreign Office to the intelligence agencies, from the Charity Commission to the Department of Education.102
Led by Sir John Jenkins, a high-ranking British diplomat with decades of experience in the Middle East and North Africa, the review team was divided into two groups, one focusing on the Brotherhood in the Arab world and the other looking at its presence inside the United Kingdom.103 Looking beyond, given the demographics of the British Muslim community, the latter team also analyzed the efforts of various Islamist groups of South Asian background that have an ideology and employ tactics similar to the Brotherhood’s.
The process went on for months, not without controversies and difficulties, and a report (said to be more than two hundred pages long) was presented to the prime minister. Even though the entire report has not been released, in December 2015 the British government published an executive summary of its findings.104 The document is arguably one of the most comprehensive assessments of the Muslim Brotherhood ever made public by any Western government, touching on many aspects of the group’s history, tactics, and ideology. And particularly when it comes to the Brotherhood in the West, it largely concurs with the negative assessments that intelligence agencies in continental Europe have long produced. In one of its key sections, it argues:
The Muslim Brotherhood have been publicly committed to political engagement in this country. Engagement with Government has at times been facilitated by what appeared to be a common agenda against al Qaida and (at least in the UK) militant salafism. But this engagement did not take account of Muslim Brotherhood support for a proscribed terrorist group and its views about terrorism which, in reality, were quite different from our own; aspects of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and tactics, in this country and overseas, are contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national interests and our national security.
Despite having been commissioned specifically to create a cohesive assessment of and engagement policy toward the Brotherhood for the entire British government, the “Muslim Brotherhood Review” has had, at best, mixed fortunes. Stopping short of recommending designation as a terrorist group, it attracted the ire of some the Brotherhood’s most ardent critics, particularly in the Arab world. At the same time, many of the group’s supporters criticized its adoption of the pessimistic view on the Brotherhood, attacking the review as poorly researched and marred by external influences. One of the strongest rebukes came from the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, which organized several hearings and published a report attacking several of the review’s findings.105
Moreover, few practical actions seem to have been generated from the process. The British government did follow the review’s recommendation to establish a permanent body, called the Extremism Analysis Unit (EAU). Housed in the Home Office and staffed with civil servants from various sections of government, it was tasked with continuing and expanding the work of the review. But it appears that the EAU has been understaffed from the onset, and its tasks eventually expanded to the monitoring of groups other than the Brotherhood. Also reducing the impact of the report was the change in the occupant of Downing Street: the government led by Theresa May appeared to have had less interest in this issue than that of David Cameron. Thus the “Muslim Brotherhood Review,” the result of an effort unparalleled among other Western governments to get a sophisticated understanding of and develop a coherent policy toward the Brotherhood and political Islam more generally, has remained largely toothless.
The dynamics in the United States have been quite different. The American debate on the Muslim Brotherhood, at least regarding its domestic branch, has been extremely polarized, with much clearer divisions along political lines than in most European countries. Pessimism about the Brotherhood, at times escalating into wild conspiracy theories, has been a virtual monopoly of the right. On the other hand, most on the left (with some notable exceptions) have dismissed accusations against the U.S. Brotherhood milieu, even those that are well documented, as preposterous fabrications motivated by Islamophobia. The U.S. debate seems to be sorely lacking that middle-of-the-road approach, characterized by a healthy skepticism that does not degenerate into paranoia, which has become common in most European countries in recent years.
Another element unique to the American debate on the Brotherhood is its heavy focus on security. Most European countries, in contrast, while not completely overlooking the potential security-related implications of the Brotherhood, have concentrated on how their activities affect social cohesion. It is telling that in the United States, from 2014 to 2017, five separate bills seeking to start the process of designating the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization were introduced in Congress.106 Most of the bills highlighted the involvement in terrorism of various elements of the global Muslim Brotherhood (from the alliance of its Libyan branch with jihadist militias to the extensive ties of its Yemeni branch to al Qaeda) and the links of U.S. organizations such as ISNA and CAIR to the Brotherhood. All were sponsored and supported almost exclusively by Republicans, and none progressed very far in the legislative process.
The Arab Spring has brought many opportunities and arguably an even greater number of challenges to the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. It is too early to fully assess all the implications of these tumultuous years and see where the Western Brotherhood is headed. But it fair to say that just as is true of the Brotherhood in the Arab world, there is a Western Brotherhood before the Arab Spring and one after it. This distinction is accentuated by another completely coincidental yet extremely important factor: the widespread generational change—occurring somewhat differently in different countries—that the Western Brotherhood is currently undergoing, as mostly Western-born activists are joining, and in some cases replacing, the first generation of pioneers at the helm of the milieu’s organizations.
At this critical juncture, various dynamics appear to be emerging. On one hand, the Western Brotherhood seems to have lost the magnetic appeal it had arguably exercised on many. The failures of the Arab Spring have created ample self-doubt, and the actions of the Western Brothers themselves have supplied additional reasons for dwindling enthusiasm. Over the past decades, as we have seen, the Western Brotherhood has put a priority on becoming trusted interlocutors of Western governments and elites—in many cases achieving that goal. But in order to do so, it has inevitably been forced to compromise some of its principles and smooth some of its rough edges. As Samir Amghar and Fall Khadiyatoulah put it, “Faced with the reality of Muslim faith management, [Western Brotherhood] activists lost their initial utopian impetus and no longer challenged the state framework or the dominant political system.”107 Essentially, not all Brotherhood activists clearly see an Islamic light at the end of the tunnel of the countless interfaith meetings, fund-raising banquets, media sensitivity seminars, and myriad other activities to which the organization devotes most of its energies. Some are also puzzled by tactics such as alliances with feminist or LGBT organizations that, while internally explained as useful means to an end, nonetheless seem to substantially deviate from what is Islamically acceptable.
As a result, Western Brotherhood organizations suffer in competition with Salafists, whose more uncompromising approach has attracted many conservative Muslims who previously would have gravitated toward the Brothers. In the words of a Belgian Brotherhood activist, “Ever since we decided to be more consensual on certain religious issues and ever since we began discussing issues with public authorities, some of our members could no longer recognize themselves in our choices and we have lost quite a lot of people.”108
At the same time, many Western-born Muslims are increasingly finding alternative platforms for mobilizing on the basis of their Muslim identity. Many young Muslim activists, whether they started their trajectory in organizations belonging to the Western Brotherhood milieu or not, are no longer constrained by the group’s monopoly on Muslim identity and freely operate in the mainstream. In fact, Western Muslim activists who have points of contact with Brotherhood milieus are often active outside the group’s structure and achieve high positions in Western political parties and civil society, particularly on the left. The closeness of the contacts between those freelancers and the Brotherhood milieu depends on the specific case, but it is clear that the Brothers increasingly are no longer the only avenue for Muslims seeking to be politically engaged in the West.
Though all these dynamics and the stories of the individuals profiled in this book (irrespective of how representative they are of a broader trend) suggest that the Western Brotherhood is weakening, there are reasons to think that the opposite might also be true. More entrenched in Western society and increasingly run by new members—often scions of prominent Brotherhood families with strong ties to one another—Western Brotherhood organizations can be seen as simply entering a new and even more successful phase of their history in the West. On this account, the new leadership now understands how to smooth some rough edges and better present itself, making it more likely to achieve its short- and long-term goals. New blood and more refined tactics thus may make the group more effective.
One core issue that will determine the future of the Brotherhood in the West is whether the new leadership will retain the movement’s core ideology. Some argue that we are entering in an era of post-Ikhwanism, and that the Western Brothers, on the pattern of European Communists in the 1970s and 1980s, will eventually shed the most radical aspects of their ideology and melt into the system. Others disagree. Ahmed Akkari, for example, believes that “the history of the Brotherhood clearly shows that despite divisions and contradictions, the Brotherhood core always managed to bring in new supporters and keep the conservative ideological line intact; when some parts of the movement become too estranged to the ideological core and even break free, the old guard always manages to restructure the organizational top and middle layer to stay supportive.”109
It is impossible at this stage to predict in what direction the Western Brotherhood will go, whether it will melt into the system or continue to work within it but with the idea of eventually changing it. Indeed, there are indicators that point in both directions: perhaps different individuals and organizations belonging to the network will take opposite trajectories over time. Irrespective of these developments, it appears clear that for years to come, the Brotherhood will remain a crucial actor in the future of Islam in the West.