by Jules Gomes
Islamists Use ‘Moderation’ and ‘Woke’ Ideologies to Achieve ‘Totalitarian’ Goal
An explosive investigation shows that the European Union has directed substantial taxpayer funding to affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood, enabling them to advance an Islamist agenda.
"[N]on-violent Islamists are frequently misidentified as ‘moderate allies’ against radicalization, despite advocating a totalitarian ideology that is fundamentally hostile to European liberal democratic values.”
Released at a press conference in the European Parliament on December 8, the investigation report “reveals in forensic detail” how the EU continues to legitimize Muslim Brotherhood (MB) affiliates by granting groups “significant funding, preferential treatment, and access to powerful networks within the EU institutions and the broader EU ecosystem.”
The report, titled “Unmasking the Muslim Brotherhood: Brotherism, Islamophobia and the EU,” published by the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, a center-right political group in the European Parliament, and co-authored by Florence Bergeaud-Blackler and Tommaso Virgili, finds that the EU allows MB-affiliates to “game the system” by parroting project goals, exploiting administrative loopholes, and “using language that mirrors grant priorities to secure funding.”
Brotherhood Combines Wokism With Wasatiyyah
The MB combines a notional commitment to the “Woke” idea of intersectionalism with the doctrine of Wasatiyyah (“middle way”), which it portrays as a theology of moderation, while simultaneously promoting a separatist ideology based on a rigid interpretation of Islam to leverage funding, the report explains.
The Brotherhood’s “labyrinth” operates as “a network of semi-independent groups” who take advantage of EU “officials’ unfamiliarity with this totalitarian religious-ideology,” and “play a clever game of dominoes, leveraging legitimacy in one member state to gain credibility in another or at the European level, then using that to charm more grant-making bodies.”
The 27-page dossier laments that EU monitoring systems are “toothless when it comes to catching deviations from a grant’s purpose,” that “a few missteps are brushed off as one-offs,” and that officials who push back risk being labeled racist or “Islamophobic.” The MB is thus able to obtain funding and legitimacy that “other totalitarian groups would never dream of getting.”
“In liberal democracies, it is legal to leverage freedoms of religion, speech, and association to promote totalitarian ideologies that would abolish those very freedoms,” Charlie Weimers, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Sweden, notes in his foreword to the report.
“This is not speculation. This is not ideology. This is evidence. For years, Brotherhood-affiliated organizations have benefited from EU and national funding streams,” Weimers told the press conference.
EU Funnels Millions to MB Coffers
The report details cases of “egregious” EU funding, including the sum of €23 million (from 2007 to 2020) given to the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), previously led by Michaël Privot, “a former sworn member of the Muslim Brotherhood who later denounced his affiliation.” ENAR is a regular partner and consultant in initiatives on climate change, migration, and “Islamophobia” sponsored by the EU and its agencies.
The European Muslim Union, a French-based organization founded by German convert Andreas Abu Bakr Rieger, known for explicitly praising the Holocaust in 1993, received over €1 million to support more 16 Erasmus+ projects, including the project “Let’s say stop to Islamophobia!” (Erasmus+ is a youth development organization managed by the European Commission.)
The EU gave Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) and its local branches more than €40 million despite the close ties between Islamic Relief Palestine with Hamas and with the Gaza Zakat Committee (IZS), a Hamas-led charity whose website describes its officials as “soldiers for Jerusalem.”
EU Turns a Blind Eye to MB-Linked Antisemitism
The European Commission ignored the charity’s antisemitism even though statements such as “Lay the bodies of the Jews on the top of the mountains, so that no dog in Palestine must suffer hunger” and references to Jews as “apes and pigs” have led IRW’s entire board to resign, banks to close their accounts, and governments to halt cooperation, the report noted.
The Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisations (FEMYSO) received €288,856 of EU funding between 2007 and 2019. Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) recently reported that FEMYSO had been identified by France as a “key player” in the MB.
In May 2024, the French Interior Ministry named FEMYSO “as a training structure for high-potential leaders within the Muslim Brotherhood movement,” describing the forum as preparing “a new generation of activists committed to extending the Brotherhood’s influence into political, social, and academic spheres.”
The Al Sharq Forum, an MB affiliate which claims that it “aims to consolidate the values of pluralism and justice,” received €1.9 million for a project titled “When Authoritarianism Fails in the Arab World,” even though its founder and director, Wadah Khanfar—a prominent leader in the Hamas Office in Sudan—celebrated the October 7 massacre. In 2022, Al Sharq got more than €100,000 as coordinator of four projects under the Erasmus+ scheme mentioned above.
Lead Co-Investigator Explains MB Strategy and EU Failure
Speaking to FWI, the report’s co-author, Virgili, explained how “the persistent support of Brotherhood-linked actors by the EU is the result of a systemic failure driven by three converging factors.”
“First, these entities and individuals operate under a veil of denial; they not only conceal their affiliations but also master institutional language, using the right ‘buzzwords’—such as diversity, inclusion, and minority rights—to seduce unsuspecting political allies and appear perfectly aligned with democratic values. This makes deep, evidence-based research essential to unmask their true ideological loyalty,” Virgili said.
“Second, the EU’s monitoring mechanisms are dangerously fragmented and insufficient: we see instances where one Commission branch may flag or investigate an organization, while another simultaneously certifies or funds it—often through ‘indirect management’ schemes that lack rigorous oversight,” the researcher warned.
“Finally, there is a critical lapse in political judgment among public officials: while there is a clear consensus to deny public support to neo-Nazi or far-right extremists, non-violent Islamists are frequently misidentified as ‘moderate allies’ against radicalization, despite advocating a totalitarian ideology that is fundamentally hostile to European liberal democratic values,” he stressed.
The MB has “used these funds not to promote integration, tolerance, or cohesion, but to entrench separatism, propagate antisemitism, support terrorism, and promote a political-religious vision incompatible with democracy and our European way of life,” MEP Weimers told the press conference.
Jules Gomes is a biblical scholar and journalist based in Rome.
Source: https://www.meforum.org/fwi/fwi-news/report-eu-funds-muslim-brotherhood-affiliates
No comments:
Post a Comment