Publisher’s Weekly has reviewed journalist Ian Johnson’s new book titled “Mosque in Munich” which details how the global Muslim Brotherhood established its early presence in Europe. According to the review:
In the wake of the news that the 9/11 hijackers had lived in Europe, journalist Ian Johnson wondered how such a radical group could sink roots into Western soil. Most accounts reached back twenty years, to U.S. support of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. But Johnson dug deeper, to the start of the Cold War, uncovering the untold story of a group of ex-Soviet Muslims who had defected to Germany during World War II. There, they had been fashioned into a well-oiled anti-Soviet propaganda machine. As that war ended and the Cold War began, West German and U.S. intelligence agents vied for control of this influential group, and at the center of the covert tug of war was a quiet mosque in Munich radical Islam’s first beachhead in the West. Culled from an array of sources, including newly declassified documents, A Mosque in Munich interweaves the stories of several key players: a Nazi scholar turned postwar spymaster; key Muslim leaders across the globe, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood; and naive CIA men eager to fight communism with a new weapon, Islam. A rare ground-level look at Cold War spying and a revelatory account of the West’s first, disastrous encounter with radical Islam, A Mosque in Munich is as captivating as it is crucial to our understanding the mistakes we are still making in our relationship with Islamists today.
The Amazon page containing the review also has an interview with Mr. Johnson explaining the book and its background.
The Munich mosque today serves as one of the principle locations for the German Muslim Brotherhood headed by Ibrahim El-Zayat, until recently the President of the Islamischen Gemeinschaft in Deutschland e.V (Islamic Society of Germany). The Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland (IGD) is considered by the German government to be the representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany. Mr. El-Zayat is currently the subject of an on-going German law enforcement investigation, in which he is one of a group of individuals tied to the IGD suspected of forming a criminal association and intending to commit a crime by obtaining funds for its “politico-religious and ultimately Islamist goals.
Mr. Johnson’s book can be ordered here.