An explosive report from the French government alleges the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood network has embarked upon a decades-long effort to forge a fifth column in France and across Europe through infiltrating government institutions and radicalising Muslim communities, while veiling their true intentions with supposedly noble causes such as fighting “Islamophobia”.
Starting in the 1950s with the emerging “religious consciousness” among Islamic immigrant workers, the Muslim Brotherhood has since “designed the matrix of political Islamism adapted to be established in the West,” a report commissioned by the French government has found, according to the national paper of record Le Figaro.
Paris intelligence said that after facing pushback in the Islamic world in the middle of the last century, the Egypt-founded Muslim Brotherhood turned its sights on Europe, initially in countries like the UK, Germany, and Switzerland and later spreading to Belgium, Italy, and France in a bid to restart the Islamic “Western conquest strategy”. Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna is cited as having then said: “We will pursue this evil force to its own lands, invade its Western heartland and fight to defeat it until the whole world cries out in the name of the Prophet.”
The report found that the Muslim Brotherhood has not only clandestinely taken control of local Islamic institutions, thereby often controlling all aspects of many Muslim’s lives, but it has also actively infiltrated government programmes in France and the European Union, often using hot button issues such as “Islamophobia” — a term coined by the Muslim Brotherhood — to both rally support as well as masking their true efforts of “subversion” of the West under a cloak of legitimacy.
According to the paper, radical Islamists connected to the Muslim Brotherhood have embarked on a “strategy of entryism of European institutions” using an activist and lobbying network through the Council of European Muslims (CEM), such as Islamic Relief Worldwide and the European Council of Imams, as a base to influence local governance and as a springboard for members to infiltrate broader EU institutions in France and elsewhere.
The very same European institutions then become a “major source of funding” for groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood movement. The report noted that the French Ministry of Higher Education has recorded an increase in alerts of potential EU funds being directed to paying for the “financing of projects contrary to republican values and relating to radical Islamism.”
Perhaps more concerning given the historic waves of mass migration from Islamic countries over the past decade, the Brotherhood has built up a massive influence dragnet throughout Muslim communities in France and throughout Europe to radicalise more people to their cause.
Often targeting impoverished Muslim areas, trained Brotherhood operatives are installed as managers of community shops, sports groups, private education, personal development services, employment assistance firms, and even dating sites, it is stated. Per the report, this is done with the aim of “supervising the life of the Muslim” and spreading adherence to practices such as forcing women to wear a veil, having men grow their beards, and the observation of Ramadan fasting.
The report found that these efforts are often coordinated through mosques, which offer Qur’anic education courses to guide the “quest for identity of young Muslims.” Currently, there are at least 114 Qur’anic schools directly tied to the Brotherhood, while hundreds more were also of a fundamentalist bent.
It also found that at least 280 Islamic associations have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in the effort to act as an effective governing body for such populations in France, ranging from charitable, educational, professional, youth outreach, and financial organisations, to control all aspects of life.
At least 139 mosques are said to be directly linked to the radical Islamist group and act as the “main emanation of the Brothers in France”. This represents around seven per cent of all places of worship for French muslims, or 10 per cent of those built since 2010. According to the report, the “overall attendance at mosques affiliated or close to the movement amounts on average to 91,000 faithful on Fridays.”
In addition to being a powerful weapon in using the principles of liberalism against the EU, the various political campaigns associated with Brotherhood-tied groups, such as those against “Islamophobia”, have also served to “legitimise” the Muslim Brotherhood within Muslim populations. “This new respectability has accentuated the development of ecosystems at the local level,” the report found. On top of Islamophobia and the supposed victimisation of Muslims in France, the movement has also propped up campaigns against Israel, and promoted Islamic finance and Halal food practices.
Commenting on the findings, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau warned: “The ultimate objective is to tip all of French society into Sharia law… this is unacceptable, since it is completely incompatible with the principles of the Republic and the objectives of national cohesion”.
The Paris intelligence paper found that the Muslim Brotherhood’s subversion efforts extend beyond France. Belgium, the home of the EU capital Brussels, is described as the Brotherhood’s “European crossroads,” with a “close network of associations and organisations.”
Germany and Austria are also said to be active hotspots, given their status as “historically the first lands of establishment of the movement” in Europe. Meanwhile, North Europe, including the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden, is characterised as a “smaller but real territory of establishment of the movement”. For its part, the United Kingdom is branded “an advanced post of the Middle Eastern movement.”
Countries in the Balkans, many of which are actively seeking membership in the EU, have large Muslim populations, and have a living memory of the Yugoslav war, have become ” the main prospect for the development of the movement in Europe,” the French report warned.
Pointing to the creation of the EU-funded ‘European Council for the Holy Quran’ in Sarajevo — before its relocation to Milan — the report said that there is a risk of further funding through Brussels’ Erasmus education programme in the Balkans would not only present a risk to the EU but also play into the hands of Muslim Brotherhood’s goals within the region.
In addition to receiving European Union money through various channels, the Islamist network also receives funding from the broader Muslim world, the report claimed. This was notably true of Turkey, which is alleged to provide “essential logistical and financial support to the European branch of the Brotherhood”.
Ankara also has also acted as the “rear base” for the European network to launch political campaigns, such as the 2020 boycott of French products following President Emmanuel Macron’s speech against “separatism” in the wake of the jihadi migrant beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty for showing his class a caricature of the Muslim prophet Muhammed.
The report, which is set to be presented to President Macron and the Defence Council on Wednesday, was light on what to do and how to untangle the vast subversive Muslim Brotherhood network, given that it is often technically operating within the bounds of the law.
Other challenges included the focus of authorities on terrorist attacks rather than slow subversion, the fear among officials and the population of being accused of “Islamophobia”, and the “cult of secrecy” tactics deployed by the Brotherhood.
The prefect of Hauts-de-Seine, Alexandre Brugère, said that Islamist groups in France often deploy the infamous practice of ‘Taqiya’, which allows for lying to obscure their true religious goals.
According to Brugère, mosques throughout the country often employ lawyers to scan sermons to avoid falling foul of the law. “The fight does not take place on equal terms,” he said, “We are in a liberal democracy and a rule of law. We fight with lead weights hanging from our feet.”
“Underground Islamism turns liberal rhetoric against our regime of freedom, with the complicity of certain political forces,” Interior Minister Retailleau added.
The report cited a prominent Muslim activist, who is said to have noted that the European legal environment allows for the use of the “model of a decent Muslim, which is considered a good model for spread of Islam in a positive way without drawing attention… to the fact that we are Islamising the West.”
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