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| Europe |
| Germany’s Evolving Counter-Extremism Policy Towards the Muslim Brotherhood |
| 2022-07-10 |
Key paragraphs, more at the link. [EERADICALIZATION] Since the Moslem Brüderbund’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 Moslem Brüderbund in particular. The Brotherhood established itself in Germany via Said Ramadan (1926-1995), the son-in-law of the founder of the Moslem Brüderbund, 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 Moslem Brüderbund 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] |
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