European Eye on Radicalization
Since the Muslim Brotherhood’s arrival in Germany in 1950, the German policy towards the Brotherhood has gone through several phases. In the first phase, there was a huge lack of understanding of the phenomenon and the risk posed by Islamism in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular. The Brotherhood established itself in Germany via Said Ramadan (1926-1995), the son-in-law of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna (1906-1949). In the 1960s, Said was put in charge of a “Mosque Construction Commission” for a house of worship in Munich. In cooperation with the Egyptian businessman Yusuf Nada and the Syrian-Italian Ghalib Himmat, the mosque became the headquarters of the Brotherhood in not only in Germany but the whole of Europe.[1]
The mosque Commission developed into a coordinating node for the Brotherhood presence in Germany, linking mosques, Islamic centres, and various front groups and associations across all major German cities. In the mid-1980s, this structure became the main representative of the Brotherhood in Germany, and it was renamed the Islamic Community of Germany (Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland or IGD), under the guidance of Mehdi Akef, an Egyptian Brother, who became the Imam of the mosque and later the Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood overall.[2] The Brotherhood presence in Germany was reinforced by a flow of Brothers from Egypt and Syria, fleeing the government crackdowns on their activities. The Syrian Brothers who settled in Germany after the failure of their full-fledged rebellion in the early 1980s tended to concentrate around Aachen, near the border with Belgium. The Syrian-dominated Aachen node of the Brothers cooperated with the Egyptian Brothers in Munich, but the two remained separate.[3]
The lack of understanding and the indifference of German policy-makers enabled the expansion of the Brotherhood presence all over Germany. As one German diplomat stated: “There was a prevalent view that conflicts between the Muslim Brotherhood and its governments were of no concern to Germany and that these were ‘domestic quarrels’. Our policymakers did not grasp the relevance of the Islamist movement because religion was widely considered to be an important factor for underdevelopment and the Islamists seemed backward-oriented while the dictatorships in the Middle East were seen as modernizing elements”.[4]
An example of how this unfolded was the IGD taking control of a number of institutions, notably the Islamic Center Cologne (Islamisches Zentrum Köln or IZK), which had been founded in 1978 by the Turkish version of the Brotherhood, known as Milli Görüş. The German Muslim Students Association (Muslim Studenten Vereinigung or MSV) also came under the sway of IGD.[5] Nevertheless, the German state, through its intelligence services, did keep some measure of a watch on the Brotherhood, collecting information on the networks and perhaps trying to recruit informants, but the intention seems to have been simply to monitor what was happening among an immigrant community the government understood poorly, rather than any strategic intention or any worry about the societal or security threats of the Muslim Brotherhood. The German security services also “acted inconsistently: they closely supervised the Munich mosque in its first years, but then appeared to have lost interest”.[6]
The major turning point for Germany in how it dealt with the Muslim Brotherhood was in 2001, after the 9/11 attacks. Germany started investigating the Brotherhood networks and the impact the ideology was having on radicalization and terrorism in the country. The historical role of the Brotherhood as a launch-pad for important terrorists, including Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and the current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, began to get attention.[7] In particular, the Germans began looking into how closely the IGD was connected to the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), known as the Council of European Muslims (CEM) since 2020, which is one of the most important transnational nodes of the Brotherhood network in Europe.[8] This was the beginning of the second phase of German policy, when official contact with the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups espousing political Islam or Islamism were eschewed, not least as part of German counter-terrorism cooperation with governments like Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.[9] Nonetheless, the Brotherhood continued to gain influence among Muslims in Germany, spreading their ideas about Islamic law and the ideal polity—ideas that contradict sharply with Western notions of popular sovereignty and liberal democracy.
The third phase of Germany’s policy toward the Brotherhood began in 2011, with the onset of the Arab Spring, when Berlin switched to a policy of “cautious engagement”.[10] Taken by surprise with the Arab revolutions, which led to the Brotherhood coming to power in Egypt and Tunisia, and rising to positions of power in Libya, the German government scrambled to find a new policy. One notion was that the Turkish government represented a moderate compromise of an Islamist party in power within a secular state structure. This created immediate tensions because the Brotherhood groups, though they said the correct things about democracy and minority rights, retained views—such as hostility to the existence of Israel—that conflicted with German policy.[11]
This policy did not last long, however. The Brotherhood regime in Egypt fell in 2013, Libya collapsed back into civil war in 2014, and Turkey turned sharply towards authoritarianism under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The creation of the Islamic State (ISIS) “caliphate” and the wave of terrorism in Europe from 2014 to 2017 changed the perceptions throughout the Continent of “non-violent” Islamists. And in the summer of 2021, the Tunisian Brotherhood government also imploded in the face of popular resistance.
In this fourth phase for Germany of dealing with the Brotherhood, the Germans are following the lead of states like Austria and France, which have strengthened measures to combat terrorism and extremism on their soil. Germany has begun looking at the social harms done by extremist groups, not only Islamists like the Brotherhood, but groups like the Turkish ultranationalist Gray Wolves. The Germans have begun moving towards legislation, particularly looking to restrict the foreign sources of funding for Islamist groups; to map the funding from state financial aid, tax exemptions, and investments like real estate; and looking to regulate the activities of Islamists within Germany.
There are signs that Germany’s efforts to restrict the space of Islamism are working. Recently, the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland or ZMD) expelled the “German Muslim Community” (DMG), one of the facades behind which the Muslim Brotherhood hides in the country. In November, an official report was issued by the European Parliament that mapped in detail the Brotherhood penetration in ten European countries. The report focused on several ideas, including the ideological variance across Brotherhood-affiliated groups, the organization’s approach to patriotism, and its funding.
On the security level, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) is taking a more active approach towards the Brotherhood, monitoring its structure and intentions. This has occurred within the framework of general political shift at all levels in Germany that has made the dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood more visible. This has been evident in the German Parliament’s discussion at the present time, where two draft resolutions have been tabled to confront Islamist organizations, especially the Brotherhood. While the struggle continues, as the Brotherhood obfuscates its presence and its political allies provide it cover, there is now a greater awareness in the mainstream of Germany and Europe more broadly of what the Brotherhood stands for and how it operates, in the name of civil society, to infiltrate and capture institutions.[12] This in itself is progress.
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References
[1] Guido Steinberg, ‘Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood’, 2013, Al-Mesbar Studies and Research Centre and the Foreign Policy Research Institute, p. 87-88. Available here.
[2] Steinberg, ‘Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood’, p. 87.
[3] Steinberg, ‘Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood’, p. 88.
[4] Steinberg, ‘Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood’, p. 90.
[5] Steinberg, ‘Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood’, p. 88.
[6] Steinberg, ‘Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood’, p. 90.
[7] McDermott, T. 2005. Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It, pp. 101-102.
[8] ‘Islamic Relief Germany fund Muslim Brotherhood Organizations’, MENA Studies and Research Center, 2 November 2021.
[9] Steinberg, ‘Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood’, p. 86.
[10] Steinberg, ‘Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood’, p. 86.
[11] Steinberg, ‘Germany and the Muslim Brotherhood’, p. 95-97.
[12] Raghida Bahnam, ‘Muslim Brotherhood in Germany: Greater Danger than ISIS, Qaeda’, Asharq al-Awsat, 7 January 2019.
