The US President’s decision last week to label chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist groups should be a wake-up call to the UK.
No longer could Donald Trump stomach how American-based Islamic charities and organisations work as fundraising fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, whose Lebanese arm is accused of helping terror groups launch rocket attacks on civilian and military targets in Israel.
Proscribing these chapters in the Middle East is the first step
to depriving them of their capabilities and resources. Let’s not be naive. The Muslim Brotherhood is an extremist organisation which, since its formation in Egypt in 1928, has been committed to the unification of Muslim societies as a single caliphate under sharia law.
As well as aiding attacks against Israel and its sympathy for Hamas, the group is backing the murderous government in Sudan, helping to prolong the catastrophic civil war there, which is fuelling the flow of refugees, many of whom end up taking small boats to Britain.
While the Muslim Brotherhood has been allowed to infiltrate mosques, charities and moderate Islamic organisations in Britain, it has been banned in many parts of the Arab world, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Those countries know all too well the deadly cost of allowing radical Islamist ideologies to run through their societies.
Yet, far from following their example, we have given sanctuary to members of the Muslim Brotherhood. One of its operatives, Abdelrahmen Adnan Abouelela, fled Egypt for London before he could face charges of bomb-making and plotting to blow up electricity pylons and gas pipes – charges for which he was later convicted in his absence and sentenced to seven years in jail.
What did Britain do, in spite of knowing about his terrorist conviction? We put him up in a four-star hotel in west London for 17 months while we considered his asylum application. And during his stay, he raped a woman in Hyde Park – a crime for which he was jailed for eight and a half years in May.
He would have been deported had David Cameron’s government outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood in 2015. Nonetheless, its investigation concluded that the group had ‘deliberately, wittingly and openly incubated and sustained’ Hamas. It found that ‘people associated with the Muslim Brotherhood have applauded suicide bombing by Hamas’.
US President Donald Trump has ordered officials to examine whether to designate some chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist groups
Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood supporters attend a protest in the capital city of Amman in November 2014
Cameron went on to comment that its ideology and activities ‘run counter to British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, equality and the mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs’.
He described how it had sought to exert influence on other UK Muslim groups such as the Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain, knowing that the Government was in dialogue with these organisations.
That the Brotherhood were not banned shows how much a part of the Establishment they had become.
The missed opportunity is astonishing today, when Islamist-stoked tensions in the UK are far worse since the Hamas atrocities of October 7. Yesterday, London’s streets once again filled with Palestinian flags and keffiyeh-wearing protesters chanting hateful slogans.
In May, the French government published its own investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood, which found that the group – under the guise of the Federation of Muslims of France – has gained control of 139 mosques.
The report described how hardened activists in the organisation will exert their influence on local councils to normalise the wearing of veils and the practice of fasting in what is supposed to be a secular country.
The Brotherhood’s aim, it went on, is to ‘structure the lives of Muslims from birth until death’.
The report identified two countries where the Brotherhood has an even stronger foothold than in France: Sweden and Britain. Sweden has launched an investigation, yet there is no sign of our own government taking the matter seriously.
A Reform UK government will not make the same mistake. Nigel Farage has made it absolutely clear that when he is in Downing Street the Muslim Brotherhood will be designated as a terrorist organisation and be banned in Britain.
Nigel Farage has made it absolutely clear that when he is in Downing Street the Muslim Brotherhood will be designated as a terrorist organisation and be banned in Britain
Last night, the UAE embassy in central London hosted a gala dinner marking the Emirates’ 54th National Day, where the £25 billion annual trade between our two countries will have been eagerly celebrated.
But we need to listen, too, when the UAE and other friendly Arab nations warn us about extremist groups.
Too many people in Britain want to treat the Muslim Brotherhood as if it were an oppressed group fighting for freedom. The reason states such as the UAE ban the Brotherhood is because it seeks the subjugation of every Muslim under one extremist order, and it will use any violent means necessary to achieve it.
President Trump, at least, has seen their true nature. We need to follow suit before its tentacles reach even deeper into corners of our national life.
Nick Candy is founder and CEO of Candy Capital.
