Muslim Brotherhood

The Muslim Brotherhood or Muslim Brotherhood, also called the Muslim Brotherhood (Arabic الإخوان المسلمون al-ichwān al-muslimūn, DMG al-iḫwān al-muslimūn), is one of the most influential Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.

It was founded by Hasan al-Banna in Egypt in 1928. Since then, the Muslim Brotherhood has spread to other countries, notably Syria and Jordan. Its two offshoots, Ennahda and Hamas (Algeria), are part of the governments of Tunisia and Algeria and of the political process there. In Gaza, on the other hand, its offshoot Hamas established an Islamist dictatorship after a democratic election, while its Libyan offshoot (the Justice and Construction Party) is considered one of the main factions in the Second Libyan Civil War. The National Congress Party, which will rule Sudan until 2019, also traces its roots to the Muslim Brotherhood. It is considered the first revolutionary Islamic movement.

The Muslim Brotherhood is considered a radical Islamist organization in Western countries. After the 2013 coup in Egypt and the subsequent ouster of Mohammed Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood was banned in Egypt and classified as a terrorist organization.

History in Egypt

Egypt under colonial domination

Egypt had been an Ottoman province since 1517 and had long been shaped by influences from the Islamic Arab world, Africa and Europe. However, Napoleon's conquest of Egypt in 1798 shifted this balance significantly towards Europe. Although France's rule was short-lived, the intervention marked a fundamental upheaval for Egypt and the Islamic world. France's victory, achieved effortlessly in military terms, destroyed the illusion of superiority of the Islamic world and entailed tremendous economic and social consequences. Napoleon initiated a series of reforms to modernize the country. After France's withdrawal, Muhammad Ali Pasha came to power in 1805, ruling the country as Ottoman governor and establishing the dynasty that ruled until 1953. In 1882, the British used an army revolt as a pretext to occupy the country and take over the Suez Canal. Egypt was now still formally part of the Ottoman Empire, but was in fact ruled by the British.

In response to Napoleon's occupation, several schools of thought emerged during the 19th century on the proper path of modernization for the country. Some intellectuals drew on the country's Islamic past, while others looked to the European Enlightenment for guidance. A third path attempted to reconcile the first two, arguing that neither complete imitation nor unreserved rejection of European ideas could be the right path for an Egyptian renaissance. However, the colonialism of European nations, which denied Islamic countries equal participation in modernity, increasingly led to a return to Islamic values from the 1870s onwards. The Persian Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897) formulated the idea that Islam was not only a religion, but a model of civilization that contained all the elements necessary for modernization. For Afghani, this meant a return to the principles laid down by the Prophet in the Qur'an, and, building on this, he developed the concept of Islamic socialism, which, unlike Western socialism, was rooted in religion. Afghani thus became an important pioneer of Islamism.

At the end of the 19th century, a national movement emerged and combined with the goals of anti-colonialism. In the early 20th century, a number of liberal and national parties were formed. Despite the spread of liberal ideals, British rule was authoritarian in nature and hindered the emergence of a liberal and open society. In 1919, a revolution broke out against British colonial rule. This uprising was led by a new generation of secular liberal nationalists under Saad Zaghlul. The British initially responded with harshness, but after nationwide demonstrations and strikes were forced to give in to the demands. On February 28, 1922, Egypt's independence was recognized in principle by the British government and released into state sovereignty as the Kingdom of Egypt. However, the constitution concentrated a significant amount of power in the person of the king and contained restrictions that continued to allow the British to interfere in the country's internal affairs. As a result, the ruling Wafd party under Zaghlul found itself constantly threatened by palace efforts to establish royal rule over the next twenty years. In addition, the British sought to contain the influence of the Wafd Party in order to protect British interests. This led to an undermining of the government's legitimacy and encouraged the rise of nationalist and Islamist groups from the 1930s onwards.

Foundation and expansion in the Kingdom of Egypt (1928 to 1952)

As Hasan al-Bannā himself writes in his memoirs, he founded the Muslim Brotherhood in March 1928 in Ismailia together with six other men who were under the impression of his lectures, deplored the domination of the British in Egypt and wanted to actively work for the strengthening of Islam and the Ummah. They took an oath of allegiance to God and swore to live as brothers and to devote themselves entirely to the service of Islam. To distinguish themselves from previous formalistic forms of organization - society, club, order, or union, the men chose the simple name al-Ichwān al-Muslimūn, the "Muslim Brothers," for their community focused on ideas and activities.

The aim of the new community was to spread Islamic morals and to support charitable actions and social institutions, but also to liberate the country from foreign occupation and to fight against the British-Western "decadence" that, in their opinion, was manifesting itself in the country. In the beginning, the Brotherhood was a religious society that wanted to spread its Islamic moral concepts and supported charitable actions in the environment of secularist tendencies and claims of Great Britain. Already at the turn of the 20th century, precursors of the later Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt began to spread three theses:

1. The genesis of the European Renaissance was based on an encounter between the West and Islam;
2. Since the 19th century, the West has been pursuing a "cultural offensive" against the Arab world, with the aim of destroying its relationship with Islam and dominating it without military intervention;
3. there was a prevailing decadent tendency in the West, and Islam would assume a leadership role in the near future.

In the 1930s, the Brotherhood became more politicized and advocated the goal of returning to the original Islam and establishing an Islamic order. It saw the religion as threatened and wanted to recognize as legitimate rulers only those who ruled in accordance with the Sharia.

Al-Banna addressed the Egyptian king and other Arab heads of state with this objective in his 1936 tract "Awakening to the Light" (naḥwa n-nūr). He also advocated armed, offensive jihad against non-Muslims and their helpers. In 1938, the "Brotherhood", under the anti-Semitic slogans "Down with the Jews" and "Jews out of Egypt", carried out violent protests against Jews. In 1938, al-Banna's work "The Death Industry" was published, radicalizing the turning away from life and unfolding the glorification of martyrdom: "To that nation which perfects the industry of death and which knows how to die nobly, God gives a proud life in this world and eternal favor in the life to come. The illusion that had humbled us consists in nothing but the love of worldly life and the hatred of death." (al-Banna)

Al-Banna formulated the basic convictions of the Muslim Brotherhood in five sentences: "God is our goal. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our constitution. Jihad is our way. Death to God is our noblest desire." The Muslim Brotherhood uses these guiding principles as its motto to this day. The submission of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood to these goals is matched by their absolute obedience to the Brotherhood's leadership.

The Brotherhood grew very rapidly and spread to neighboring countries. Still a group of a few hundred at the end of the 1930s, by 1941 it had about 60,000 members and by 1948 about 500,000 members and hundreds of thousands of sympathizers. It was strictly hierarchically organized, had its own mosques, companies, factories, hospitals and schools, and occupied important posts in the army and trade unions. It placed great emphasis on education and training in line with its Islamic vision of society. Thus it succeeded in gaining great influence in the Egyptian state.

From 1938 until the start of the war in 1939, the Muslim Brotherhood received financial support from the German Reich through the German agent in Cairo, Wilhelm Stellbogen. The German government subsidized several Egyptian anti-British groups, but the Brotherhood received the largest payments. The Brotherhood used the funds for arms purchases and propaganda in the spirit of the emerging Middle East conflict in what was then Mandate Palestine. Muslim Brothers were already participating in the Arab Revolt in Palestine as volunteer fighters. The military arm of the organization later emerged from their cells.

In the early 1940s, the Brotherhood set up a secret military apparatus. It participated in anti-British actions. After attacks by Muslim Brothers and the exposure of the secret society, Prime Minister Mahmud an-Nukrashi Pasha banned the Brotherhood in December 1948, whereupon he himself fell victim to a Brotherhood attack shortly afterwards. For their part, the authorities responded with increased persecution. Al-Banna was finally shot dead in Cairo on 12 February 1949, probably on behalf of the Egyptian royal family; the assassin was not caught.

Salih Ashmawi succeeded al-Banna as head of the Brotherhood for a short time. As early as 1950, the Brotherhood was rehabilitated and the prisoners released. Under the new leader Hasan al-Hudaibi, it continued to pursue its goals: Education and social improvements for the masses, a nationally oriented economy, and the liberation and unity of the Arab world. In the early 1950s, the Brotherhood's resistance to the British led to a full-scale petty war.

After the revolution of the "Free Officers" and under Nasser

The Muslim Brotherhood also supported the coup d'état of the "Free Officers" in July 1952. Some of the officers, including Anwar as-Sadat, were even Muslim Brothers themselves. Soon tensions between the Brotherhood and the new government under President Nasser increased, and there were also internal conflicts. Eventually, things escalated, and the government banned the Brotherhood again on January 14, 1954, but allowed it back in by March. Nevertheless, the Brotherhood carried out an assassination attempt on President Nasser on 26 October 1954, which was unsuccessful. This was followed by brutal repression; many supporters were arrested. It was Zainab al-Ghazali and her network of women who maintained the link between the imprisoned Muslim Brotherhood and the outside world during this period. However, al-Ghazali herself was arrested in 1965 and sentenced to death for her political activities.

Among those arrested in 1954 was Sayyid Qutb, an ideologue who joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1951. During his imprisonment, he developed a new, more militant ideology: In his main works, the Koran commentary "In the Shadow of the Koran" and the combat pamphlet "Signs on the Way," he declared that Muslim societies, too, could be in a state of (pre-Islamic) "ignorance and ignorance" (Jāhilīya) and should therefore be overthrown by right-believing Muslims in order to establish an Islamic state. After brief release and re-arrest in 1965 as part of a new wave of persecution following the uncovering of a conspiracy plot, Qutb was finally executed in 1966. Another Muslim Brotherhood ideologue executed under Nasser was the civil judge ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAuda. In his writings, he had argued that Muslims were obligated to fight for sharia legislation and to oppose laws that contradicted it.

Especially the collapse of Nasserism after the Six-Day War in 1967 and the "export" of Egyptian teachers and technicians to the Arabian Peninsula in the course of the oil boom after 1973 strengthened the influence of the Muslim Brothers again.

Toleration under Sadat

President Sadat released important Muslim Brotherhood leaders from prison in 1971, including Zainab al-Ghazali, and allowed the organization to become active again, but without officially lifting the ban. The Brotherhood continued to enjoy great success, especially in the universities, but also among impoverished rural refugees-its numbers at this time were estimated at one million activists and several million sympathizers. From 1972, Umar at-Tilimsani took over the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood and propagated non-violent struggle. In 1976 Sadat legalized two Muslim Brotherhood journals, ad-Daʿwa ("The Call") and al-Iʿtiṣām ("The Preservation"), which subsequently developed into important platforms for criticizing Sadat's policies of economic liberalization and improved relations with the West.

After the radical groups Takfīr wa-l-Hijra (Declaration on Infidels and Emigration) and Islamic Jihad (al-Jihad al-Islāmī) split off at the end of the 1970s, the Egyptian Brotherhood tended to be among the moderate Islamist organizations that fundamentally rejects violence as a means of politics, but explicitly approves of it in the fight against "occupiers". This restriction is particularly aimed against Israel. Sadat, in part as a concession to the Islamists, introduced Sharia as the official criminal law and created a religious council (Shura). In Article 2 of the Egyptian constitution, Sharia was declared the basis of Egyptian law Nevertheless, the Brotherhood agitated against Sadat. Therefore, he had about 1,000 Muslim Brothers arrested in September 1981. Initially, the Muslim Brotherhood was also suspected of being responsible for Sadat's assassination on October 6, 1981, but this proved to be false.

Electoral success under Mubarak

Sadat's successor Mubarak released a large part of the moderate Muslim Brotherhood from prison in January 1982. Detached from its importance as a political group, the Muslim Brotherhood has also developed over time into a driving force of the Egyptian economy. This trend was initiated as early as the 1970s by Anwar as-Sadat's new (domestic) political course. Many of the Muslim Brothers who had fled persecution by President Nasser abroad and had prospered there returned to Egypt after his death and now began to invest their saved capital in their own businesses. Today, there are reportedly eight Muslim Brothers among the 18 business families and their associates who are considered the real controllers of the Egyptian economy. By the end of the 1980s, all Muslim Brotherhood-controlled companies, both domestic and foreign, had a combined estimated capital of US$10-15 billion.

In 1986 Hamid Abu Nasr took over the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1984 and 1987, the Brotherhood participated in parliamentary elections through alliances with great success. In the 1987 election, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated candidates won 38 of the 444 seats in the People's Chamber by standing for the Egyptian Labor Party and the Socialist Liberal Party, respectively. Prior to the November 1995 parliamentary election, the Muslim Brotherhood formulated a "compendium of democratic goals" outlined in 15 guiding principles. These include support for free and fair elections, freedom of religion, freedom of expression and assembly, and independence of the judiciary. However, the government ensured that the Muslim Brotherhood did not enter parliament. Of the 150 Brotherhood candidates who ran as independents or for the Labor Party, none were elected. Some candidates close to the Muslim Brotherhood were even arrested. In early 1996 Mustafa Mashhur became the new leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Since it was not allowed to run as a party, the Brotherhood also ran independent candidates in subsequent elections. In the 2000 parliamentary elections, it won 17 seats in parliament, and in the 2005 election it won 88 seats, making it the strongest opposition force. In the election campaign, its representatives explicitly endorsed the principles of democracy and pluralism. Particularly since 2005, the movement has caused an international stir with its involvement in the Egyptian parliament, when, contrary to the expectations of many experts, it made considerable efforts to reform the political system towards a more democratic one. For example, Samer Shehata of Georgetown University and Joshua Stacher of the American University in Cairo praised this effort in a detailed analysis in Middle East Report. They wrote in summary: "Brotherhood MPs are attempting to transform the Egyptian parliament into a real legislative body, as well as an institution that represents citizens and a mechanism that keeps government accountable".

In 2008, Egypt's parliament passed a law banning the circumcision of girls and marriage under the age of 18. This met with sharp criticism from the Muslim Brotherhood, which was officially banned at the time, and which sees the ban as a contradiction to Islam.

The Muslim Brotherhood has about one million active members in Egypt today and maintains various charitable institutions such as hospitals and social welfare centres, especially in the poorer neighbourhoods. Poor people's meals and the creation of jobs for young people have led to support for the Muslim Brothers, especially from the lower classes.

Revolution in Egypt (from 2010)

Since the beginning of 2010, Mahmoud Hussein has been the Secretary General of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has been undergoing a transformation for some years: while older members tend to prefer a theocracy as a system, young well-known representatives, on the other hand, predominantly call for the introduction of a democracy with Islamic elements.

These differences also ensured different levels of participation during the 2011 revolution in Egypt, in which the Muslim Brotherhood as an organization took a rather subordinate or passive role. Younger Muslim Brothers took part in the protests to some extent and distanced themselves, among other things, from the idea of the possible introduction of Sharia law beyond what had previously applied. As a result, some of them were expelled from the Muslim Brotherhood and formed the Egyptian Current Party. The Muslim Brotherhood itself declared that it would reject the idea of a religious state in Egypt. Initially, they declared that they would not participate in a new government in the event of a regime change. An offer of talks by Mubarak's Vice-President Omar Suleiman to all opposition groups was initially rejected by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badi'e, as long as Mubarak was still in office. This position was later revised in favor of a summit of opposition groups with the government.

In contrast to the secular forces in the opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt spoke out in May 2011 against postponing the elections and drafting a new constitution beforehand. On the other hand, they support the protests for a change in the electoral law to prevent the election of former politicians of the Mubarak regime.

As the end of Mubarak's government loomed, the Muslim Brotherhood founded the Freedom and Justice Party on April 30, 2011, and Saad al-Katatni became its secretary-general. In the parliamentary elections at the end of 2011, the party won just under half of the parliamentary seats.

Mohammed Mursi's government (2012-2013)

For the presidential election in Egypt in 2012, the party wanted to nominate the deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Chairat el-Shater, as a candidate, but he was not admitted by the election commission. The party's chairman, Mohammed Mursi, who had also belonged to the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, was therefore sent into the race as a reserve candidate. He won the election and served as Egypt's president from June 30, 2012 until his overthrow on July 3, 2013. Although Mursi ended his membership in the Freedom and Justice Party and the Muslim Brotherhood when his election victory became known, as he said he wanted to be president of all Egyptians, the Muslim Brotherhood thus effectively provided Egypt's first freely elected head of state.

The Muslim Brotherhood's recipe for political success was offensive charity combined with a display of strict religiosity. This highly capital-intensive campaign recipe was able to produce impressive individual projects because many Muslim Brothers are wealthy and the Muslim Brothers have an international network of supporters. Many Egyptians voted for the Muslim Brotherhood because they believed it would then carry out many more charitable projects. However, they lacked the financial resources to do so. Add to this a severe economic crisis during Mursi's tenure, and the number of Egyptians living below or at the poverty line rose to 40 million. This was compounded by rising food and fuel prices. Rich Arab countries lost confidence in the Egyptian government and cut financial aid. Instead of addressing economic and social problems, the Mursi government's first draft law dealt with lifting the ban on female genital mutilation, which secular groups criticized in principle - the majority of Egyptians at least saw it as setting the wrong priorities.

Mursi's time in office was strongly marked by the government's efforts to consolidate the power of the Islamists in Egypt for the long term. In December 2012, Mursi attempted to give himself special powers by decree that would have elevated him above any laws. Demonstrations were violently dispersed by Muslim Brotherhood armed units, killing dozens of protesters. In the aftermath of ongoing protests marking the first anniversary of Mohammed Mursi's accession to power, the army leadership deposed him after an insistent ultimatum on July 3, 2013, and appointed interim civilian president Adli Mansur the next day. Supporters of Mursi called for massive protests that degenerated into violence and were bloodily put down. Muslim Brothers who had called for violence were put on trial, others went underground. After the mass protests by the Islamists subsided, the transitional government attempted to return to normality.

Renewed ban on the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 and classification as a terrorist organization

The Muslim Brotherhood was banned by court order on 23 September 2013. At the beginning of September, a military court had already sentenced 52 supporters of the Brotherhood to several years in prison.

On December 25, 2013, the Egyptian government classified the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. The Brotherhood had previously been accused of being responsible for the bomb attack on a police building in Al-Mansura, in which 16 people died.

In late April 2014, the court in al-Minya sentenced 683 supporters of ousted former President Mohammed Mursi to the death penalty by hanging, including Chairman Muhammad Badi'e, in a mass trial; previously, 529 Mursi supporters had been sentenced to death in a similar mass trial in March 2014.

Mohammed Mursi (2013)


Muhammad Badi'e (2011)


Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine (1948)


Hasan al-Bannā with followers (1935)


Labiba Ahmed, founder of the women's faction of the Muslim Brotherhood

Other countries

Along with so-called Wahhabism, the Brotherhood is one of the most influential elements of Islamism. Members of the Brotherhood at times included Umar Abd ar-Rahman, who later founded the more radical al-Jamaʿa al-islamiyya, and Aiman az-Zawahiri, who today is considered the point man for al-Qaeda and denounces the Muslim Brotherhood for now contesting elections. According to the Brotherhood's self-description, there are branches in more than 70 countries around the world.

In 2007, the US think tank Nixon Center believed that the Muslim Brotherhood could become a potential ally of the United States in the Middle East because they rejected a global jihad and advocated democracy. In doing so, the Nixon Center pointed to its own doubts about the Muslim Brotherhood's credible commitment to democracy and to a very wide range of positions held.

Palestine

As early as the 1930s, the Brotherhood supported the Arabs in Palestine. Since 1946 there has been an organizational branch in the former Transjordan. By 1947 there were 25 branches in Palestine alone, with 20,000 members. The Brotherhood took part in the 1948 war against Israel. Hamas today is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas carried out 40 percent of the attacks on Israeli buses, nightclubs and coffee houses, killing more than a thousand Israelis. The terror war waned in intensity as peace negotiations dragged on, but also because Israel sealed off the West Bank from Israel with a wall that makes uncontrolled border crossings very difficult. In 2005, Hamas won a majority of the votes in the Gaza Strip in the election for the Palestinian Legislative Council and has since formed the government there. In 2006, Israel carried out airstrikes on Hamas leaders, and Hamas attacked Israel with rockets. This resulted in a three-week open war between Israel and Hamas in 2008, which Hamas was unable to withstand. Israel subsequently sealed off the Gaza Strip. In response, the international Muslim Brotherhood network organized aid flotillas.

Syria

In Syria, the Brotherhood branch was founded in 1937 by scholars around Mustafa as-Siba'i (1915-1964), who were members of the Egyptian Brotherhood. After their uprising and the Hama massacre in 1982, Muslim Brotherhood activities in Syria came to a virtual standstill under Ali Sadreddin al-Bajanuni. The Muslim Brothers did not achieve any military successes in the civil war in Syria. Here, radical Salafist groups such as Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State were much more successful.

Tunisia

In Tunisia, the Movement of Renewal (En-Nahda) exists as an offshoot. Ennahda won 41.5 percent of the vote in Tunisia's first free election in October 2011 and formed a government with secular parties that created a constitution not specifically based on Islamic law. Later, two leaders of the liberal opposition were assassinated, and there was speculation that Ennahda was allying with radical Islamists to eliminate democracy and create a state of God. In the fall of 2013, Ennahda gave up the post of prime minister, demonstrating a democratic bent. Political scientist Cengiz Günay suspects that participation in the democratic process brought a change in Ennahda's internal objectives. So far, Ennahda has not been able to develop any solutions for the country's real problem, the poverty and lack of prospects of very many young people. As in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood's slogan "Islam is the solution" has lost credibility in Tunisia as a result of its economic failures.

Morocco

Morocco has the Justice and Development Party (Morocco), which emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood. Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane distanced himself from the Muslim Brotherhood in 2011. Unlike the latter, the Justice and Development Party does not seek to interfere in people's private lives.

Muslim Brotherhood in other Arab countries

• In Sudan, they introduced Sharia law in 1983, when the National Islamic Front had become one of the main parties.
• In Jordan (Islamic Action Front, in Arabic Jabhat al-Amal al-Islami) they are the main opposition party. In 1994 they intensively opposed the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty.
• In Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood founded the Justice and Development Party in 2012.
• In Saudi Arabia, Muslim Brothers have existed since the 1930s. When Hasan al-Bannā wanted to establish a branch organization in Hejaz in October 1946, this was rejected, but in the 1960s Muslim Brothers from Egypt gained a very strong foothold in the educational system and in the media. In particular, at the Islamic University of Medina, founded in 1961, their share continued to increase throughout the 1960s, and at the King Abdulaziz University of Jeddah, founded in 1967, and the Umm al-Qura University, spun off in 1981, they even made up the majority of lecturers from the beginning. Among the particularly well-known Egyptian Muslim Brothers who taught in Jeddah were Sayyid Qutb's brother Muhammad Qutb, who was released in 1971, Sayyid Sābiq, the author of the book "The Jurisprudence of the Sunna" (Fiqh as-sunna), and Muhammad al-Ghazāli, who headed the Department of Daʿwa and "Fundamentals of Religion" (uṣūl ad-dīn) until the mid-1980s. Muslim Brothers also made up the majority of the staff in the religious secondary schools, which are referred to as "scientific institutes" (maʿāhid ʿilmīya). The massive influx of Muslim Brothers, many of whom were under the influence of Sayyid Qutb's ideas, had a great impact on the religious field in Saudi Arabia. A separate Saudi movement emerged in the 1970s that sympathized with the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood and became known as "the Islamic Awakening" (aṣ-ṣahwa al-islāmīya). The Saudi interior minister has criticized the Muslim Brotherhood many times in the past. In March 2014, it was classified as a terrorist organization in Saudi Arabia.
• There has been an offshoot in Lebanon since 1936.
• In Algeria, the subsidiary organization FIS won the elections in 1991, whereupon they were annulled.

Muslim Brotherhood in Europe

In Europe, the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE) acts as an umbrella organisation for various organisations with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. As an international umbrella organization, it maintains foreign relations and officially represents the position of being the central point of contact in the Sunni Islamic sphere.

Britain was the first Western country to establish contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood. They began in 1941 and intensified in the 1950s when MI 6 and a group of Tory MPs made joint plans with the Muslim Brotherhood to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser. Britain instead joined France in an unsuccessful attempt to annex the Suez Canal and other parts of Egypt in order to oust Nasser.

In 2014, British Prime Minister David Cameron commissioned a team of high-ranking British diplomats and intelligence officers, including the head of MI 6, to conduct an investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood's activities emanating from the UK, in particular into possible links to extremist and terrorist activities. Security experts judged the action unusual, because if there was a concrete suspicion that terrorist activities were being directed, the government would instruct the intelligence services to carry out an investigation without informing the public. As a result of the investigation, the British government announced unspecified restrictions on the activity of the Muslim Brotherhood on its territory, which it accused of proximity to extremist groups in the Middle East. It refrained from banning the Brotherhood.

In September 2019, a funding program by the State of Qatar was revealed that aims to strengthen the influence of political Islam across Europe with the funding of 140 mosque buildings, cultural centers and schools, all linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. According to ARD research, the Muslim Brotherhood's connections reach all the way to the top of the state of Qatar and the ruling Al-Thani family.

Muslim Brotherhood in Germany

As early as 1994, the Central Council of Muslims in Germany was founded with considerable participation of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations IGD, IZ Munich and IZ Aachen. Through various associations, the Muslim Brotherhood still has great influence on the Central Council of Muslims today.

Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood often use "Islamic centres" for their activities in Germany. The organisation with the most members, with several hundred followers, is the "Islamic Community in Germany e. V." (IGD), renamed the German Muslim Community (DMG) in 2018, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2008 under the chairmanship of Ibrahim el-Zayat. It emerged from the "Moscheebauinitiative in München e. V." (Mosque Building Initiative in Munich), founded in 1958, which built the Islamic Center Munich (IZM). In addition to its headquarters in the IZM, the IGD maintains, according to its own information, "Islamic Centers" in Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Marburg, Braunschweig and Münster. According to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Lower Saxony, the Brotherhood had 1800 members in Germany in 2005. The North Rhine-Westphalia Office for the Protection of the Constitution emphasizes in its detailed inventory of May 2006 that the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood are incompatible with the German constitution:

The youth organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany is the Muslimische Jugend in Deutschland e.V. (Muslim Youth in Germany). A statement by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution from 2009 states:

According to the state reports on the protection of the constitution of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, the Muslim Brotherhood exerts significant influence at the Islamic Center in Munich. Followers of the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood had founded the "Islamic Vanguards" in the early 1980s with an organizational focus in the "Islamic Center" in Aachen. The then supreme leader of the Brotherhood, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, who lives in Cairo, described the president of the IGD, Ibrahim el-Zayat, in an ARD television report as the "head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany". Ibrahim el-Zayat defended himself against this designation. In a counterstatement on the website of the Muslim Brotherhood, he denied being a "member of the Muslim Brotherhood". In addition to Ibrahim El-Zayat, Mehmet Erbakan is also said to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany. The non-profit society "Saxon Meeting Place" is apparently linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Under the preacher Dr. Saad Elgazar, meeting centers and prayer rooms were opened in nine Saxon cities in six months.

In a Nov. 2019 interview with FAZ, Burkhard Freier, the head of North Rhine-Westphalia's Office for the Protection of the Constitution, expressed concern about the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany in politics and society:

Muslim Brotherhood in Austria

In August 2017, Lorenzo Vidino of George Washington University, in cooperation with the University of Vienna, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism, and the Austrian Integration Fund, prepared a study on the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Austria. According to this study, the Islamist movement is also active in Austria and has considerable connections and influence here. Individuals and organizations close to the Muslim Brotherhood have assumed key positions in the lives of Muslim immigrants in Austria. The Islamic Religious Pedagogical Academy (IRPA), for example, is "undoubtedly under its influence" due to various connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. Organisations and individuals with links to the Muslim Brotherhood had also taken on central roles in the reception of asylum-seekers arriving in Austria from predominantly Muslim countries; however, their aspirations would run counter to the measures of Austrian politics, as their values would be in contradiction to Austria's constitutional values. The Muslim Brotherhood would aim at a division of society and a strengthening of the influence of political Islam. They also categorically reject a critical discussion of Islam as "Islamophobia" and deliberately exaggerate anti-Muslim incidents in Islamist circles. Against the background of the sharp rise in Islamic radicalization, the spread of the narrative of Muslims as victims must be viewed with concern.

On the basis of the study, Efgani Dönmez criticized the links between the SPÖ and the Muslim Brotherhood, citing as an example a member of the Brotherhood who is active in Vienna as an operator of childcare facilities funded by the city. The Viennese SPÖ member of the provincial parliament Omar Al-Rawi is also said to have a close relationship to the Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood also has great influence within the IGGiÖ, and associations such as "Liga Kultur", which is mainly present in Vienna and Graz, are seen as having close links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Southeast Asian Movements Modeled on the Muslim Brotherhood

In addition, Southeast Asian Muslims have launched Islamic movements modeled on the Muslim Brotherhood. Students from Malaysia founded the Islamic Representative Council (IRC) in Brighton in 1975. They sought to establish an Islamic order but, unlike other Islamic groups, felt that the best way to do this was to establish cells modelled on the Muslim Brotherhood. They relied on achieving an Islamization of society through educational work (tarbiya) and infiltration of already existing organizations with their own followers. Followers of the movement who returned to Malaysia after completing their studies spread their ideology at the universities there. Under the name IKRAM United Kingdom & Eire, the group continues to exist in Europe today. Another Southeast Asian grouping that explicitly aligns itself with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is the Indonesian Justice and Welfare Party (PKS - Partai Keadilan Sejahtera).