UK inquiry into the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

A Palestinian official once reportedly claimed “the Americans mistakenly think that moderate political Islam, represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, would be able to combat radical Islam”. Contacts between the US and UK governments and various MB representatives over the years may well have had this thought in mind.  Key allies Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE, however, have all banned the Brotherhood, calling it a terrorist organisation, and made clear their desire for Western governments to do likewise.  In 2014 British Prime Minister David Cameron announced an inquiry into the MB and MB-related groups and their extensive but secretive operations in the UK and elsewhere.  Allegedly under Saudi pressure to come up with damning evidence against the Brotherhood, the British government eventually published the main findings in December 2015.

The inquiry found that for the most part, the MB have preferred non-violent incremental change as the means of achieving their goal of establishing an Islamic state, but they are prepared to countenance violence – including, from time to time, terrorism – where gradualism is ineffective.  They have not been linked to terrorist-related activity in and against the UK, and have often condemned such activity in the UK associated with al-Qaeda.  However, MB-related organisations and individuals in the UK have openly supported the activities of the Palestinian Islamist organisation Hamas, and some have consistently opposed programmes by successive UK governments to prevent terrorism.  (Hamas, which has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007, has been designated a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US and Canada, and its military wing by the EU, Japan, the UK and Australia; it is supported by Qatar and Turkey.  It has carried out IED and suicide attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets, and continues to make rocket attacks against Israel.)

The MB, the inquiry report went on, faced a significant challenge for community support in the UK from militant Salafists who returned to the country after fighting in Afghanistan and who regarded the Brotherhood as ineffective.  For some years, the MB shaped the new Islamic Society of Britain (ISB), dominated the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and played an important role in establishing and then running the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).  The MCB sought and obtained a dialogue with the government, and the MAB were active partners in a security dialogue with the police, collaborating with them to eject a militant Salafist preacher, Abu Hamza, from the Finsbury Park mosque in north London.  However, the inquiry stated, there had been no substantive dialogue between government and any part of the Brotherhood in the UK since 2009.  The MAB appeared less active than previously, it said, and since 2001 the ISB had distanced itself from the MB and consciously set out to promote a British Muslim identity and support British values.

The inquiry found that a complex network of charities and fundraising groups associated with the MB had also developed in the UK over many years. Whilst some of these seem to be raising funds only for the Brotherhood in the UK, others have been linked to Hamas.  As of July 2014, members of Al-Islah, the Emirati chapter of the MB, resident in the UK were also linked to several UK-based charities that were in turn associated with the UK-based Emirates Media and Studies Centre.  The inquiry’s report added that MB organisations in the UK, including charities, are connected to counterparts elsewhere in Europe.  The MAB, for example, is associated with the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE, or UOIE), established by the MB in 1989.

The inquiry noted in conclusion that much about the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK remains secretive, including membership, fundraising and educational programmes, but MB associates and affiliates in the UK have at times had significant influence on the largest UK Muslim student organisation, on national organisations that have claimed to represent Muslim communities, and on charities and some mosques. Though their domestic influence has declined, organisations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood continue to have an influence in the UK which is disproportionate to their size; and aspects of MB ideology and tactics, in this country and overseas, “are contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national interests and our national security”.

Overall, then, the inquiry seems to have judged the MB to be relatively harmless, albeit secretive, at least in terms of domestic explosive violence.