ADRIAN MORGAN: THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN THE UK
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8659/pub_detail.asp
“Useful Idiots of Islamism control the media and politics, and the Ikhwan must be laughing at our ignorance and supine ineffectiveness. Britain once ruled the waves. Now it waves a white flag…..”
The expansion of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan) in the 1960s happened mainly due to Saudi funding, with King Faisal – an anti-Semite and pan-Islamist who ruled from 1964 to 1975 – donating funds to Ikhwan groups abroad. According to Dr. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui of Britain’s Muslim Parliament:
“In 1965 when there was conflict between Nasser and Faisal over the leadership of Muslim Brotherhood, a deal was struck between the Muslim Brothers and Saudi Arabia, that Saudis would give jobs and protection to the Muslim Brother leadership and in return the Muslim Brothers would mobilise Islamic movements in support of the Saudis. They got together for the glory and leadership of Saudi Arabia as the custodian of two holy places of Islam.”
One of the first Muslim Brotherhood da’wah groups in the UK was FOSIS, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies. According to its website, it was founded in 1962, while its Facebook page claims it was formed in 1963. FOSIS has made English language editions of works by Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian MB. The last book they published on this matter was based on Banna’s “Letter to a Muslim” which they produced in 1995.
One of the seven founders of FOSIS, Malaysian-born Dato Muhammad Iqbal is also involved with a group called Made in Europe, which claims to fight climate change and bring people together “to achieve social justice and peace in our increasingly troubled world.” The chairman of Made in Europe is Khalid Sofi, who is a senior member of the Muslim Council of Britain, who was formerly a director of Muslim Aid. The Muslim Aid charity was founded by Yussuf Islam (Cat Stevens) in 1984 and in 2004 Muslim Aid became a member of the Union of Good (pdf) coalition of charities. The Union of Good (‘I’tilaf al-Khayr) is headed by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and was designated as a terrorist entity by the U.S. Treasury on December 11, 2008.
Political Advocacy and Influence
Kemal el-Helbawy, born in 1939 in Egypt, had joined the Ikhwan aged 12. In the early 1970s in Saudi Arabia, Helbawy was a co-founder of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and served as its first executive director until 1982. He moved Britain where he has lived since 1994and was the official spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West from 1995 to 1997.
At a conference in 1992, he said: “Do not take Jews and Christians as allies, for they are allies to each other.” Currently Helbawy is chairman of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism, which claims to be “dedicated to the in-depth study of Islamic resurgence, democratisation and extremism in the Muslim world.” He has lived in Britain since 1994 and he helped to establish two influential Muslim organisations – the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), and the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB).
The MCB, officially founded in November 1997, has been influential in British politics, even influencing Tony Blair to support a bill that the MCB originally intended to make blasphemy against Islam illegal. The bill was altered and now is known as the Racial and Religious Hatred Act. In June 2005, a month before the 7/7 bombings, MCB leader Iqbal Sacranie was knighted, even though he had famously said that death was “too good” for Salman Rushdie. After Omar Bakri Mohammed invited Osama bin Laden and Muhammad Fadlallah (leader of Hezbollah) to come to Britain in 1996, and the Jewish Board of Deputies had objected, Sacranie had said:
“Taking a hostile view towards scholars who wish to come to this country to present their points of view at a conference will not serve good community relations.”
The MCB acted as an official representative of mosques and organizations, and many of its leading figures were supporters of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, founded in India in 1941 by Syed Abul Ala Maududi. The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) however, kept closer to its Muslim Brotherhood roots, even though the MAB and MCB often came together to pressure the UK government on specific issues. MAB had been founded by Helbawy in November 1997, the same month as MCB.
Anas al-Tikriiti was the head of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) from 2004 to 2005. His father was Osama Tawfik al-Tikriti, a leader of the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood (Hizb al-Islami al-Iraqi). From November 1991, the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood had been publishing its newspaper (Dar as-Salaam) from London. Anas al-Tikriti now runs the Cordoba Foundation, which he founded in 2005, and he frequently writes in the leftist Guardian newspaper. Tikriti has even claimed that Hamas – a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood – is motivated by land, and not by religion – blatantly contradicting the clauses in the Hamas Charter.
The leftist former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has enabled the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. In 2004 he welcomed Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, to London. In 2005, while addressing members of Parliament, Livingstone described Qaradawi (who supports suicide attacks against Israeli civilians) thus:
“Of all the Muslim leaders in the world today, Sheikh Qaradawi is the most powerfully progressive force for change and for engaging Islam with western values. I think his is very similar to the position of Pope John XXIII.”
In September 2009, Ken Livingstone conducted an uncritical interview with Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of MB front group and terror organisation HAMAS. The 2004 London visit of Qaradawi was initiated by Azzam al-Tamimi of the MAB.
Tamimi said in November 2004 on a BBC TV HardTalk show that he would willingly be a suicide bomber against Israel: “If I have the opportunity I would do it …” Tamimi has since set up an organization called the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), whose website is currently suspended. The BMI has involved another MAB Muslim Brotherhood activist, Anas al-Tikriti of the Cordoba Foundation, as its spokesman.
The president of BMI is Mohammed Sawalha, who was identified as a former fundraiser for Hamas, who – according to the BBC – was known on the West Bank by his code name of Abu Abada. Sawalha had fled to Britain in 1990 after being wanted by Israel, and from London was said by reporter John Ware to have allegedly continued to fund Hamas from London. This took place before Hamas was designated by the USA as a terrorist organization.
Sawalha is behind an annual festival in London, called IslamExpo, which promotes da’wah in Britain. The Metropolitan Police put the Muslim Association of Britain in charge of Finsbury Park Mosque when it was reopened after being shut down due to the activities of hook-handed imam, Abu Hamaza al-Masri, who had illegally taken over the mosque. The mosque reopened with Azzam al-Tamimi being one of the five trustees of the newly-opened mosque. This change of leadership had been arranged by Azzam al-Tamimi and the Muslim Contact Unit, a branch of the Metropolitan Police. The Muslim Contact Unit has had as one of its advisers the Tunisian-born Mohamed Ali Harrath, who runs Islam Channel, a satellite/cable channel in the UK:
In 1986, Mohamed Ali Harrath had helped to set up a group called the Tunisian Islamic Front (Front Islamique Tunisien or FIT). Harrath admitted this, even though it has been suggested that Rashid al-Ghannushi (al-Ghanouchi) who had founded the banned Muslim Brotherhood-related En-Nahda had set up the FIT group himself. A US Department of Defense memo (pdf, p 6) suggested that FIT could be the “armed wing” of En-Nahda. In May 1995, this group had ordered all foreigners in Tunisia to leave or be killed, but they did not carry out the threats. However, they did claim to have killed four policemen.
Harrath told the Times that “revolution is not [necessarily] a dirty word” and “there is nothing wrong or criminal in trying to establish an Islamic state.” According to a 2008 research report from the University of Warwick (pdf, p 4), the head of the Tunisian Islamic Front is Alamin Belhaj. Dr Belhaj also heads the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Libyan Islamic Group” in the UK. Belhaj was involved (PDF) with the Scottish Islamic Foundation, which is seen by some as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. In November 2009, Belhaj became head of the Muslim Association of Britain…
The Metropolitan Police Muslim Contact Unit police unit is advised by the Muslim Safety Forum, itself associated with extremism via its treasurer Azad Ali. Azad Ali, who works in the U.K. Treasury, has also been an adviser for the chief prosecutor in the U.K, Keir Starmer. Azad Ali used his blog “Between the Lines” to deny that the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, in which 180 people died, were acts of terrorism. Ali is more closely linked to the Islamic Forum of Europe, than the Muslim Brotherhood itself. The IFE is seen as a front-group for the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which has close links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The IFE is also strongly involved with the East London Mosque, which has twice invited the anti-Semite Abdurahman al-Sudais, imam of the Grand Mosque at Mecca. One famous visitor to the mosque was the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
There are several charities which are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated groups. Muslim Aid, for example, is headed by Iqbal Sacranie, former secretary general of the MCB, and is part of the MB- and Hamas-founded coalition known as the Union of Good. The UK Charities Commission is a body that regulates charities in Britain, but it refuses to ban Interpal from operating, even after three investigations. On August 22, 2003, Interpal was designated as a terrorist entity by the US Treasury, who claimed it was funding Hamas. There is no space here to document charities with links to the Ikhwan, but suffice it to say that the Muslim Brotherhood now has influence in most areas of British political life.
In Britain the Brotherhood has fulfilled the ambitions set out in “The Project,” a document discovered in Switzerland in November 2001. This document, apparently written by Said Ramadan, son-in-law of Hasan al-Banna, the Ikhwan’s founder, is dated December 1, 1982. This document describes a plan for gaining influence, including cooperation with other Islamic groups and using the Palestinian issue as a rallying point for jihad and da’wah.
The Muslim Brotherhood has its apologists in the media. This past week, BBC Radio 4 has had Kemal el-Helbawy on its morning news show blatantly lying about the “peaceful, pro-democracy” ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. On Wednesday evening on the TV show This Week, BBC journalist Rageh Omaar claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood is “nothing like Hamas”, even though Hamas is a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Omaar is regarded as a leading journalist in the BBC, and his comments that downplay the Brotherhood’s support of Hamas violence are astounding. Omaar also has a show on Al-Jazeera, a TV station which provides a podium for Yusuf al-Qaradawi to discuss Islamic fiqh, whose director-general Wadah Khanfar apparently has a background with the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Britain is regarded – as it is amongst some members of the American political establishment – as the “acceptable face” of Islam. Britain under the last Labour government devolved power to regional assemblies, and in Scotland, a MAB Muslim Brotherhood associate called Osama Saeed has been influential.
Saeed was the Scottish spokesperson for the MAB, but since Scotland gained its own parliament, he has linked up with the SNP (Scottish National Party) and heads the Scottish Islamic Foundation (SIF). The SIF was given £200,000 ($321,750) by the Scottish government to run a promotional festival, similar to IslamExpo. Called IslamFest, the festival never took place, and Osama Saeed was forced to give back more than half of the money. The remaining money (£70,000 or $112,600) had already been “spent.”
Britain has allowed itself to be a pawn of the Brotherhood and its associated groups. Police forces, national and regional government, schools and charities have allowed themselves to be influenced and “advised” by the Ikhwan and its affiliates. The media similarly puts forward apologists and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood to present and promote its views.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been influential in British universities for almost half a century, through the machinations of FOSIS, and this problem is entrenched in Britain. Any critic of Islamism is labelled as an Islamophobe and thus views that do not fit with the status quo are marginalized and silenced in the British mainstream media. Within this climate of political correctness, sane opposition to Islamism is not allowed to exist. Useful Idiots of Islamism control the media and politics, and the Ikhwan must be laughing at our ignorance and supine ineffectiveness. Britain once ruled the waves. Now it waves a white flag…..
Family Security Matters Contributor Adrian Morgan is a writer and artist, a former Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society and is the Editor of FSM.
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