Two French journalists recently revealed that Qatar Charity, an organization close to the government of that Gulf Emirate, had invested more than 70 million Euros in its proselytization work in Europe by 2014, and four million Euros had been invested in the Muslim Brotherhood network in Switzerland alone, almost as much as in Germany — a surprising fact given German’s vastly superior global footprint. Besides supporting a museum and mosque projects linked to the local Muslim Brotherhood branch, Qatar also provided the Swiss-French Islamist activist Tariq Ramadan with a steady income by paying him no less than $35,000 per month as a “consultant” to Qatar Charity.[1] Qatar’s interest in Switzerland can be explained by the extensive history of Muslim Brotherhood activity there: The country was central to the Muslim Brotherhood’s networks in Europe since the late 1950, largely due to the presence of the Ramadan Family.
Tariq’s father, Said Ramadan, an Egyptian, joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a teenager. He became the private secretary of Hassan al-Banna, the movement’s founder and his future father-in law, in 1945. Ramadan was instrumental in organizing the Brotherhood branches in Palestine and Jordan in the years preceding Israel’s founding. Twice expelled from Egypt, first by King Farouk and later by Gamal Abdel Nasser after Nasser fell out with the Brotherhood, Ramadan roamed the Arab world and Pakistan for several years, before settling with his family in Geneva in 1958. During his exile and in later years, he enjoyed the support of countries opposed to Nasser’s ambitions of regional dominance and to his Arab socialism, in particular Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
With the help of his allies, Said Ramadan opened an Islamic Centre in a villa that Ali bin Abdullah Ali-Thani, the former Emir of Qatar, acquired in 1959. The Islamic Centre’s establishment was initially welcomed by the Swiss authorities. They believed Ramadan to be a pro-Western figure, since they were aware of Ramadan’s opposition to Nasser and to Communism. In Geneva, Said Ramadan published the magazine Al-Muslimun, then the main intellectual organ of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1962, he also became the roving ambassador of the nascent Muslim World League established by Saudi Arabia. The goal of his journalistic and religious-political work was to shield the growing Muslim diaspora in Europa from the influence of Western culture and strengthen their Islamic identity. The Muslim Brotherhood network in the West would help realize this goal — and Ramadan considered Geneva to be the base for its expansion.[2]
However, Ramadan had many enemies. Egypt sabotaged Ramadan at every turn and put pressure on Qatar to withdraw their support. Subsequently, Ramadan had to find a new home for his Islamic Centre. In Switzerland, the Egyptian regime had a sophisticated propaganda and spying apparatus at its disposal for its operations against Muslim Brotherhood, which was not only used to control the Egyptian émigrés, but also to collect information on the Swiss Jewish community and organize campaigns against Israel and France.[3] The competition between Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood for influence over the Arab students in Europe was particularly vicious. Ramadan had made them a main target of Muslim Brotherhood propaganda. The small group of Egyptians studying at Swiss universities tended to be critical of Nasser’s dictatorship. The Egyptian regime therefore dispatched a special agent to Switzerland to spy on Arab students and push them to establish a new Arab student organization, which was free from Ramadan’s influence. Those students loyal to Nasser were awarded with a continuation of their scholarships, even if they failed in their studies.[4] The struggle between Ramadan and his Arab opponents culminated in a failed attempt to assassinate Ramadan in 1962.[5]
Meanwhile, the Swiss became increasingly aware that Ramadan was playing a double game: He presented himself in English as an anti-Communist friend to the Swiss authorities, while inveighing against Western civilization, including Switzerland, and propagandizing antisemitism in its Arabic language publications. An internal Swiss report described the writings of the Muslim Brotherhood as having an “attitude towards Western customs and ideas [that is] in general intolerant […] In particular, it resents the West having infected the Islamic world […] with (alleged) materialism and relativism. Persistent warnings are given above all against rationalist university teaching, as far as it deals with Islam, religion and history”.[6] Another report found that the Muslim Brotherhood was clearly obsessed with a supposed Jewish-Crusader alliance against Islam, at the centre of which was Israel, a state that was described as “an incarnation of the thought of hell, a mixture born of the encounter between greedy Zionism, which stems from the falsified Talmud and falsified Torah, as it took shape in the protocol of the Elders of Zion, and the spirit of the Crusaders, inspired by jealousy, having so reasons to be angry with Islam. […] In our opinion, this deformed child found can only be crushed with the weapon of religious dogma and faith. And which belief system is stronger and better able to crush Jewry and the Crusade than Islam?”[7] Still, the realization that Said Ramadan was an anti-Western and antisemitic activist had no influence on Swiss policymaking.
In 1965, Nasser’s regime announced that the Muslim Brotherhood had tried to stage a coup d’état against Nasser and accused Said Ramadan of being the mastermind behind it. Embarrassed, the Jordanians withdrew their support from Ramadan and he lost his post as Jordan’s permanent delegate to the United Nations in Geneva, which he had held since 1961 and which had provided him with diplomatic immunity and a residence permit.[8] The US and Britain, who had believed the Brotherhood to be in terminal decline, were surprised by these events — putting into doubt Egyptian accusations that these Western governments were secretly colluding with the Muslim Brotherhood.[9] In the same vein, Swiss inaction to withdraw Ramadan’s residence permit were seen by Egypt as proof of US and British influence on Swiss policy. However, in the internal discussions of the Swiss authorities on Ramadan’s future residence status in Switzerland, no such influence is detectable. Rather, they were sympathetic to Ramadan because of his opposition to socialism and to Nasser — Egypt’s nationalization had significantly targeted Swiss investments in Egypt and years of Egyptian spying and propaganda in Switzerland had further antagonized the Swiss authorities. They were therefore inclined to turn a blind eye towards Ramadan’s activities.[10]
The geopolitical developments seemed to justify this policy. After the Six-Day-War, with Nasser’s armies defeated, the Swiss came to believe that Islamism was the wave of the future and that “the friends of Said Ramadan [might] take power in the coming months in one state or another still considered progressive or socialist but deeply shaken by the latest events”.[11] As a result, they did not want to mess with the prospective rulers, taking, therefore, a more favorable stance towards Said Ramadan and his family. This assessment, and not the alleged connections of Said Ramadan to Western intelligence services (rumors popularized by Nasser), was the reason why Ramadan was allowed to stay in Switzerland. From his newly gained tranquility in Geneva, Said Ramadan was able to steadily expand the Muslim Brotherhood network, helped by his talent for self-promotion. In an interview in 1975 for instance, he asserted that the Islamic Centre was overseeing forty mosques in Western Europe and claimed to be the leader of the seven million Muslims then living on the continent.[12] Despite such grandiose statements, Said Ramadan’s ambitions were serious, as the future development of the Muslim Brotherhood network in Europe would show.
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References
[1] Sylvain Besson, “L’argent du Qatar inonde l’islam suisse — et paie Tariq Ramadan,” 24Heures, March 4, 2019, sec. Suisse, https://www.24heures.ch/suisse/argent-qatar-inonde-lislam-suisse-paie-salaire-tariq-ramadan/story/19768990; Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, Qatar papers : Comment l’émirat finance l’islam de France et d’Europe (Michel Lafon, 2019).
[2] See my upcoming article D, “The Beginnings of Political Islam in Switzerland: Said Ramadan’s Moslem Brotherhood Mosque in Geneva and the Swiss Authorities,” Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 2019.
[3] See: Daniel Rickenbacher, “Arab States, Arab Interest Groups and Anti-Zionist Movements in Western Europe and the US” (electronic dissertation, University of Zurich, 2018).
[4] Ministère Public Fédéral Service de Police, “Rapport sur Abdel-Wahab Hamdy” January 11, 1963, CHBAR E4320C#1994/120#700*.
[5] See: Rickenbacher, “The Beginnings of Political Islam in Switzerland: Said Ramadan’s Moslem Brotherhood Mosque in Geneva and the Swiss Authorities.”
[6] Robert Rahn, “Bericht zu Al-Muslimun” October 1962, CHBAR E2003A#1974/52#37*.
[7] Sylvain Besson, La Conquête de l’Occident. Le projet secret des islamistes (Paris: Le Seuil, 2005), 57–58.
[8] See: Rickenbacher, “The Beginnings of Political Islam in Switzerland: Said Ramadan’s Moslem Brotherhood Mosque in Geneva and the Swiss Authorities.”
[9] Martin Frampton, The Muslim Brotherhood and the West: A History of Enmity and Engagement (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 2018); see also Daniel Rickenbacher, “Maryn Frampton, The Muslim Brotherhood and the West,” European Eye on Radicalization, February 2019, https://eeradicalization.com/the-muslim-brotherhood-and-the-west-a-history-of-enmity-and-engagement/.
[10] See Rickenbacher, “The Beginnings of Political Islam in Switzerland: Said Ramadan’s Moslem Brotherhood Mosque in Geneva and the Swiss Authorities.”
[11] EPD, “Notice concernant Said Ramadan” July 5, 1967, CHBAR E4320C#1994/120#700*.
[12] Antoine Exchaquet, “Le Centre Islamique de Genève responsable de 7 millions de musulmans en Europe,” Tribune de Genève, May 1975.
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