Written Evidence from Mr Steven Merley (ISL0006)

About The Author

Steven Merley is an investigator and intelligence specialist who since 1992 has specialized in the investigation of political extremism and is currently the Editor of the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch, a daily intelligence digest covering the activities of the Global Muslim Brotherhood. He has worked closely with the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London on articles about the Muslim Brotherhood and a variety of news publications have published his commentary on the Brotherhood. Mr. Merley has given presentations at Harvard University in the US, at McGill University in Canada and spoken at events sponsored by the US State Department, the European Parliament, and in June 2013 presented a seminar at the British Parliament.

Introduction

The below forms written evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s Inquiry into Political Islam. The below seeks to address, in particular, the challenges involved in developing UK governmental policy towards the Global Muslim Brotherhood given the paucity of knowledge about the movement’s true nature and activities.

Summary:

1. While welcome, the UK Jenkins report on the Muslim Brotherhood underestimates the degree of global networking and deception employed by the worldwide networks of the Muslim Brotherhood.

2. A recent conference of Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups held in the US, the deceptive practices of a UK-based Hamas-support organization, and an organization representing a twelve-year political cooperation between the Global Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi and Salafi/Jihadists directed against the West all call into question what is really known about the worldwide activities of the Muslim Brotherhood.

3. A comprehensive international, intelligence-led investigation into the Global Muslim Brotherhood should be launched immediately in order to understand and to assess the network’s links to terrorist networks around the world. In the meantime, the UK should adopt an extremely cautious approach in its dealings with the movement and any of its affiliates.

The Global Muslim Brotherhood

4. For 15 years I have been investigating, documenting and writing about what I came to call the Global Muslim Brotherhood, defined as the global network developed by Muslim Brothers (Ikhwan) who fled their home countries and settled in Europe, the United States and elsewhere and who went on to found what has become some of the most prominent Islamic organizations in their new home countries.

5. On more than one occasion, critics have dismissed the term ‘Global Muslim Brotherhood’ as a conspiracy theory with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood once famously calling the idea “a Hollywood Fiction.”[1] However, the Jenkins report is a vindication of the notion, for example describing Europe as “an important base for the growing Muslim Brotherhood global network.”

6. Despite this welcome support of the concept of the Global Muslim Brotherhood, by its very nature the Jenkins report was not able to delve as extensively into the phenomenon as the subject deserves and perhaps thus may have underestimated the depth and breadth of the Brotherhood and the key role played by individuals residing in the UK.

Global Networking and the Role of the UK

5. For example, a coalition of US Muslim Brotherhood groups known as the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) recently organized the “1st International Conference of Muslim Councils in the West” held in the Washington, D.C. area from 1-3 February 2016.[2]

7. There were said to have been 200 conference attendees including representatives from North America, South America, the Caribbean, Australia, and Europe and the conference was expected to feature a White House briefing and a visit to the US Congress as well as a banquet to which various government officials from around the world were to be invited. The conference was said to be “the first of its kind to bring Muslim leaders around the world together to exchange experiences and to discuss common issues of concern to our communities” and to be “vital to our continued growth and development as a global community “.

8. Illustrating the ties of the conference to the Global Muslim Brotherhood, the event’s press conference featured twelve individuals on the stage including Oussama Jammal, the USCMO Secretary-General, and Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) which emerged from the Hamas support infrastructure in the US.[3] Also featured prominently was Anas Altikriti, the most important leader of the Muslim Brotherhood network in the UK although he disingenuously denies his ties to the Brotherhood.[4] Other photos from the conference show Mohammed Kozbar, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Finsbury Park Mosque in London.[5]

9. Other European groups known to be tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood were also in attendance at the conference. For example, a photo from the conference features an individual known to be Abdallah Ben Mansour. Although the photo is captioned only “France representative,  Ben Mansour is the current President of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), an umbrella group representing the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe.[6] [7] [8] Also attending the conference was the Sveriges muslimska råd (Swedish Muslim Council), also tied to the Muslim Brotherhood.[9] [10]

Deception

10. Also underestimated by the Jenkins report is the degree of deception employed throughout the Global Muslim Brotherhood. Although the report acknowledged that “much about the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK remains secretive”, in depth investigation has shown that beyond secrecy, there appears to be a concerted effort to deceive and obscure the identify and activities of the Brotherhood network.

11. Prior to the advent of the “Arab Spring”, for example, it was rare for any individual or organization to even acknowledge their ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet, following the Arab Spring, many well-known leaders of the network began appearing in advisory positions to Muslim Brotherhood governments in the MENA region such as Ayman Aly,  the FIOE Secretary-General, who served as a foreign policy advisor to the former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.[11]

The UK Hamas-Support Network

12. Another example of the pervasive deception employed by the Global Muslim Brotherhood is the UK-based Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) which describes itself as "an independent consultancy focusing on the historical, political and legal aspects of the Palestinian Refugees” and which was recently accorded consultative status by the United Nations NGO committee of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

13. Despite this claim of independence, in December 2010, the Israeli government declared the PRC to be an illegal organization stating "the Center functions as Hamas's organizational branch in Europe and its members are senior Hamas leaders who promote the movement’s agenda in Europe, and directly interact with various Hamas leaders, particularly from Damascus.”[12]

14. The Israeli position is supported by the many ties of the PRC to the Global Muslim Brotherhood and/or Hamas which are not disclosed by the organization. Current and past PRC directors have also been directors of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), a part of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK, as noted by the Jenkins report, and have also have included a trustee of INTERPAL, a UK charity described by the Jenkins report as part of the Hamas and Brotherhood infrastructure in the UK.[13]

15. One-time PRC Executive Director Arafat Shoukri (aka Arafat Madi), has also been President of the European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza (ECESG), a group whose telephone numbers and address are the same as the PRC and which is one of the main sponsors of the Gaza flotilla movement and also tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.[14] [15] Zaher Birawi, another PRC director, is a former Hamas operative who found refuge in Britain in the 1990’s and who is also a trustee of a UK charity that is part of the Union of Good (UOG), the global Hamas fundraising network initiated by the networks spiritual advisor Youssef Qaradawi.[16] [17]

16. The PRC has also been one of the main sponsors of the annual “Palestinians in Europe Conference” held each year in a different European city and which features numerous speakers tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.[18]

Deception at the EU

17. The deception employed by the PRC was extended to its lobbying activities at the European Union. Dr. Arafat Shoukri at one time the Executive Director of the PRC, was also the Executive Director of the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR) which described itself as “an independent not-for-profit organisation which has been established to promote dialogue and understanding between European, Palestinian and Arab parliamentarians and policy-makers.”[19] [20]

18. Once again, however, and despite the claim of independence, the CEPR operated largely as a pro-Hamas lobbying group at the EU and had accompanied EU lawmakers on trips to Gaza to meet with Hamas leaders. In January 2014, the Israeli Defense Minister outlawed the CEPR calling it “Hamas’ leading organization in Europe.”[21] [22]

19. In addition to Dr. Shoukri, two of of the other CEPR trustees have ties to the Global Muslim Brotherhood and/or Hamas. Anouar Gharbi, now serving as Foreign Affairs Adviser of the President of Tunisia, is also a founding member of the ECESG and an officer of the Association de Secours Palestinien (ASP) in Switzerland, the Swiss member of the Union of Good (UOG).[23] [24] [25] [26] Mazen Kahel has been the Treasurer of the Comité de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (CBSP), the French member of the UOG. [27]  The UOG, the ASP, and the CBSP have all long been been designated by the US as terrorist organizations for their funding of Hamas.[28] [29]

20. In June 2014, Arafat Shoukri left the UK to take an unidentified job in Qatar and since that time the CEPR appears to have been moribund.[30] However, several months after the departure of Dr. Shoukri and in a pattern common to the Global Muslim Brotherhood, a new organization surfaced known as the EuroPal Forum (EPF). The EPF describes itself as "an independent European-wide organisation based in London working to achieve a positive and accurate public opinion on Palestine” and both known leaders of the EPF, Zaher Birawi and Mazen Kahel, are also officials of the PRC.[31]

Deception and the Relationship of the Global Muslim Brotherhood to Terrorism

21. The Global Muslim Brotherhood has been particularly successful in concealing its relationship to “Jihadist” terrorism. Even the highly critical Jenkins report stated “The Muslim Brotherhood has not been linked to terrorist related activity in and against the UK. The Muslim Brotherhood in the UK (eg MAB) has often condemned terrorist related activity in the UK associated with al Qai’da”.

22. Others have even claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood serves as a kind of “firewall” against Jihadist organizations such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.[32] Perhaps the foremost proponent of this Firewall hypothesis is the UK-based Cordoba Foundation, led by Anas Altikriti and associated with the Muslim Brotherhood according to the Jenkins report. In response to the Jenkins review, Cordoba recently published its own report that lays out the Firewall argument by claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood stands in complete opposition to Salafism, including the Salafi-Jihadists such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. [33]

23. For example, the Cordoba report states “The Brotherhood has been characterised by its choice of moderation and peaceful participation in public affairs, which is precisely what differentiates them from the more radical Salafists and other reprehensible terrorist Islamist groups that opted for violent means to implement their political aims. In fact, the Brotherhood has traditionally received severe criticisms from these extremist groups for its peaceful and democratic way to defend its vision of society.”[34]

Global Anti-Aggression Campaign

24. However, a seemingly obscure organization based in Beirut known as the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign (GAAC) shows that far from being “differentiated” from radical Salafists and terrorist Islamist groups in reality the Global Muslim Brotherhood, including the Cordoba Foundation itself along with Anas Al-Tikriti, has been engaged in a 14-year political cooperation allegiance with some of those very same groups and their supporters.

25. The GAAC was founded in April 2003, shortly after the outbreak of the second Gulf War in Iraq and as a new body of supporters of global Jihad against the United States and the “Crusader” West.[35]  The Campaign was initiated by the Saudi opposition figure Safar Al-Hawali and now GAAC Secretary-General to counter what was described as a “vicious aggression by Zionists and the American administration” directed at the Muslim nation [umma].

26. The GAAC founders included at least 495 individuals, among them Salafi, Salafi-Jihadi, Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas leaders including the US designated terrorist Abd-Al-Majid Al-Zindani, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen, UK former Hamas commander Mohammad Sawalha, one of the co-founders of the British Muslim Initiative along with Anas Al-Tikriti, and a group of Kuwaiti Salafists including Hamid Al-Ali, designated by the US in July 2006 for providing financial support to Al-Qaeda affiliated groups.[36] Also among the founders was Abdallah Al-Nafisi who has proposed an anthrax attack on the US that was “guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour.”[37] Other GAAC founders included leaders in the Jordanian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhoods including Essam Al-Arian, the well-known Vice-Chairman of the Freedom & Justice Party.

27. The GAAC was re-launched in February 2005 during a conference in Doha with the participation of GAAC President Safar Al-Hawali – who told the participants that the third World War was not military but rather “a religious war, hostile to our deeply entrenched values and morals in all Muslim lands.“[38] The re-launch conference was headed by the now GAAC President Abdul Rahman Bin Umair Al-Nuaimi, a Qatari who would later be designated as a terrorist by the US in connection with his support for Al-Qaeda. Other notable individuals participating in the re-launch were Youssef Qaradawi, Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal, and leaders in the Syrian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhoods.[39]

28. Other current GAAC leaders include Executive Director Rabih Haddad who in the 1990’s worked for precursor to Al-Qaeda and later became the chairman of the Global Relief Foundation – designated by the US in 2002 as a terrorist organization for its ties to and support of Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban.[40] [41]. In July 2003 Haddad was deported to his native Lebanon on the grounds that he represented a threat to US national security.[42]

29. In total, at least seven leading GAAC figures and/or their organizations have been designated as terrorists by the United States, the EU, and/or the United Nations for their support of Al-Qaeda and related groups – with some of these leaders known to have been close to Osama Bin Laden himself. News reports also identify at least three GAAC figures as funders of the so-called Islamic State off Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).[43]

30. The main public activities of the GAAC have been sponsoring and/or participating in a series of international conferences centered on Iraq, Palestine, and the ‘Arab Spring.’  These conferences were attended by a wide variety of Global Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist leaders – who at times called for violence in the form of supporting the Iraqi “resistance” against Western forces, opening a “third Jihadist” front directed at Israel, called for a declaration of war should Western warships enter “Muslim Waters”, and called on Sunni Muslims to support the Syrian rebels “through every kind of jihad.”[a][44]

31. Prominent attendees at these conferences included Youssef Qaradawi and Rachid Ghannouchi, head of the Ennahda Party in Tunisia who opened the December 2011 GAAC conference in Tunisia that included such figures as Abdallah Al-Nafisi, the GAAC figure known for suggesting an anthrax attack on the US, Abdal Wahhab Al-HumayqanI, a Yemeni designated by the US in 2013, and Wagdy Ghoneim, an Egyptian cleric known for anti-Semitic speeches and who is close to the Muslim Brotherhood.[45]

32. In 2013, GAAC hosted a conference in Istanbul, where a new coalition emerged called the “Global Coordinator To Support Rights And Freedoms” and which included the GAAC, the Alkarama Foundation headed by US designated terrorist and GAAC President Abdul Rahman Bin Umair Al-Nuaimi, several umbrella Salafi bodies, Qaradawi’s International Union Of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), and two organizations including the Cordoba Foundation headed by UK Muslim Brotherhood leader Anas Altikriti who moderated a session at the conference.[46]

33. The most recent GAAC conference was held in Istanbul from12-14 February of this year (2016) and was titled “Support in Al-Aqsa – a matter for the Nation [ummah] and priorities for action”.[47] It took place at the Retaj Royale Istanbul Hotel, and concluded with an “international day in support of Al-Aqsa and Bayt Al-Maqdis”.[48] Among the conference attendees was Hassan Bin Ali Al-Kettani, a former ideological leader of the Salafi- Yya Jihadiyya in Morocco who was imprisoned in connection with the 2003 Casablanca bombings.[49] Kettani was also pictured at the conference with Wagdy Ghoneim, a virulently anti- Semitic cleric close to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Refai Taha, a former leader of the Gama’a Al-Islamiyya in Egypt who was recently killed in Syria by a US drone strike. [50] [51] [52] [53] A Turkish member of the IUMS and a delegation of the Al-Quds International Institution, close to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and designated by the US, were also present.[54] [55] [56]

34. In addition to its conferences, the GAAC website features a variety of English language news items, some written by GAAC, all consistent with the GAAC theme that Muslims are under attack by the US and its allies. The website’s Arabic pages are much more radical and aggressive.

V.  Conclusions/Recommendations

35. While welcome, the UK Jenkins report on the Muslim Brotherhood underestimates the degree of global networking and deception employed by the worldwide networks of the Muslim Brotherhood.

36. The recent conference of worldwide Brotherhood groups held in the US, the deceptive practices of the Palestinian Return Centre, and the history of the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign (GAAC) all raise issues about what is really known about the  Global Muslim Brotherhood.

37. By its participation in the GAAC, it can be argued that the Global Muslim Brotherhood appears to have set aside its theological differences with the Salafists and the Salafi/Jihadis in order to join together in a fight against the US and its allies. This should call into question the entire history of Western efforts to engage with the Global Muslim Brotherhood - in a misguided attempt to find a reliable Islamic partner to help combat the very same groups with which the Brotherhood are now cooperating.

38 A comprehensive international, intelligence-led investigation into the Global Muslim Brotherhood should be launched immediately in order to understand and to assess the network’s links to terrorist networks around the world. In the meantime, the UK should adopt an extremely cautious approach in its dealings with the movement and any of its affiliates.

April 2016