Among the most prominent members of the Ikhwan during this transitional period were: Youssef Nada, Said Ramadan, Ghaleb Himmat, Mohamed Akef, and Yousef Qaradawi, who is today known as the International Muslim Brotherhood’s “spiritual guide” and is a leading Islamic Legal scholar. Each of these men played an important role in transforming the Ikhwan into the international Muslim mafia it is today.
The history of their penetration of Western societies in Europe is instructive for those seeking to understand how and the extent to which similar influence operations are being run against the United States. Of these men, Said Ramadan is particularly noteworthy as he was al Banna’s assistant for years, married his daughter and became a driving force in the Brotherhood leadership after al Banna was killed by the Egyptian security services. His son, Tariq Ramadan, is a member of Brotherhood royalty and one of today’s most assiduous practitioners of the stealth jihad. In January 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reversed a six-year ban on the younger Ramadan’s entry into the United States. He has used his renewed access to American audiences to advance the Brotherhood’s civilization jihad.182
Post-war Germany offered the Brotherhood a valuable safe haven in the heart of Europe, primarily because the Brothers had established a relationship with the Nazis during World War II and maintained ties to powerful Germans after the war. Additionally, the West Germans were especially welcoming of Syrians and Egyptians because of a state policy that offered assistance to any “refugees” from nations that formally recognized Bonn’s rival, East Germany – something both Egypt and Syria did.
The Brotherhood leadership, which insinuated itself into the societies of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other European countries, established numerous front organizations for the Ikhwan – a pattern the organization follows aggressively around the world and especially in the West to this day. For example, Said Ramadan moved to Cologne, where he received a law degree, and founded the Islamic Society of Germany. He presided over it from 1958-1968.
In 1962, Ramadan founded the Muslim World League in Saudi Arabia.Ghaleb Himmat was a Syrian who was a citizen of Italy, who directed the Islamic Society of Germany from 1973-2002.183 He established the Al-Taqwa Bank, which Italian intelligence dubbed “the bank of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Himmat ran Al-Taqwa and a group of front companies in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Bahamas with Youssef Nada. Before it was shut down in 2002, Al-Taqwa became known for its funding of: al Qaeda; the Brotherhood’s Palestinian arm, known as Hamas; Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters; and other terrorist organizations.
In the 1960’s, these senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders planned and built a huge complex known as the Islamic Center of Munich which became an important staging point for the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. A new book by Ian Johnson entitled A Mosque in Munich describes the powerful force-multiplier this facility became for Ikhwan operations in Europe and beyond. It also reveals longstanding U.S. government ties to the Brothers, including Said Ramadan who contributed to the construction of this mosque.184
In 1973, several dozen Muslim Brothers attended a meeting of the Islamic Cultural Centres and Bodies in Europe in London, England in order to organize the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in Europe. Ghaleb Himmat was present as the head of the Islamic Community of Southern Germany. While no agreement on strategy to develop a European Islamic network was reached, this meeting laid the foundation for such a plan.185
Four years later, the senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders met in Lugano, Switzerland, near the homes of Ghaleb Himmat and Youssef Nada to discuss the strategy for moving the Brotherhood forward.186 Yousef al-Qaradawi was among those present at this meeting. One of the first actions taken afterwards was the establishment of the MB front known as the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT). IIIT’s role was to maintain the ideological purity and consistency of the Brotherhood’s expanding operations. During a subsequent meeting in Saudi Arabia in 1978, the Brotherhood decided to set up IIIT near Temple University in Philadelphia, an institution where leading Islamic thinker and Muslim Brother Ismail Faruqi was teaching at the time.187 Later, the IIIT moved its headquarters to Herndon, Virginia. 69
In the 1980s, Mohammed Akef (the MB’s Supreme Guide for several years until early 2010), who was then serving as the imam at the Munich mosque, moved the MB’s European headquarters into the Markfield Conference Centre, a small community near Leicester in the UK.188 The Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) is housed there and led by an Iraqi named Ahmed al-Rawi. It has become one of Europe’s largest MB organizations.189 The Markfield Conference Center is owned by the Islamic Foundation which is an affiliate of the Muslim Council of Britain – both Muslim Brotherhood front groups. Yousef al-Qaradawi is heavily involved with this entire network. The Federation has become the starting point for a number of other Muslim Brotherhood entities, including the Institute for the Study of Human Sciences and the European Council for Fatwa and Research. The latter is headed by al-Qaradawi.190
In France, the Brotherhood has the Union of Islamic Organizations in France,191 and its partner organization in Italy is the Union of the Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy.192 Those groups work, respectively, with the French and Italian governments in order to advance the Muslim Brotherhood agenda and subvert their respective nations, while using claims of victimhood and demands for equality and tolerance to mask their true intentions and marginalize or silence critics.
In the United Kingdom, the Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim Association of Britain are two of the most prominent MB organizations.193 Like their counterparts on the Continent, the MCB and MAB work with the British government at the highest levels toward the same end: subverting Her Majesty’s Government and nation from within.
The late 1990s saw the MB launching the Forum for European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO), which is headquartered in Brussels. FEMYSO describes itself in its own literature as “a network of 42 national and international organizations bringing together youth from over 26 different countries,” 194 and credibly claims to be the primary organization in Europe for all Muslim youth. This Muslim Brotherhood organization – like most of the Ikhwan’s other fronts – has significant influence and appears to have encountered little resistance from European security services. In short, Muslim Brotherhood organizations exist across Europe today. As we shall see with respect to the MB footprint in the United States, virtually without exception, the leading Muslim organizations across the continent are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood. Even though the affiliation with the Brotherhood for most of these organizations is easily established, and the true, seditious objectives of these organizations are readily discernable, most European governments are unwilling to face reality – let alone deal effectively with the threats posed by MB penetration of the highest levels of their societies. Take, for example, several cases in point: Two of the most prominent Muslim Brothers in Europe, Ghaleb Himmat and Yousef Nada, were designated as terrorism financiers by the U.S. Treasury Department in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Treasury also deemed their bank, Al-Taqwa, as an entity that funds terrorism. 195
For his part, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Yousef al-Qaradawi, was named in the HLF trial as an unindicted co-conspirator for his involvement with that Hamas front. All three of these individuals have, nonetheless, been allowed to continue doing business with and, in some cases, actually in Europe.196
One reason for Europe’s unwillingness to confront and counter the danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood and its operatives is that in parliamentary politics of some nations, Muslim communities are increasingly seen as critical voting blocs.197 To the extent that the Ikhwan is able to capitalize on such perceptions long before Muslims achieve majority status in the demographics of a number of European nations, it has greatly facilitated the MB’s efforts to insinuate shariah into and otherwise exercise influence over these states.
Growing unease about the success of the Islamicization of Europe has begun translating into pushback, however – most notably in the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders’ party rooted in opposition to shariah has garnered unprecedented support. The question is: Will it amount to much and, if so, will it happen in time?