Is Israeli analyst Zvi Mazel has published an insightful article observing that the list of terrorist organization recently published by the UAE included numerous organizations tied to the Muslim Brotherhood in the US and Europe. The article begins:
11/24/2014 The list of terrorist organizations published on November 16 by the United Arab Emirates cabinet is causing acute embarrassment in the West, since the Muslim Brotherhood and all its offshoots, from the Middle East to Africa, Asia, Europe and the US, figure prominently there.
The UAE did not stop there and, alongside the usual suspects – al-Qaida and its affiliates, Islamic State, Boko Haram, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis and the like, listed well-known Islamic organizations in Italy, Sweden, Finland, Serbia, Great Britain (four), Denmark, Norway, Germany, Belgium and the United States (two). Though all are NGOs operating as welfare associations or associations for the defense of the rights of Muslim minorities in Western countries, they have strong ties to the Brotherhood. Some of these organizations were created by the first waves of Arab immigrants to Europe in the ’50s and were later taken over by the Muslim Brothers; others were created by the Brotherhood at the same time to make sure that the newcomers – students and workers – kept their Islamic identity and did not integrate into Western society.
The list has provoked angry reactions from European countries and from the United States because it includes powerful Muslim organizations such as the Council on American- Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim American Society (MAS), or the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF). These organizations enjoy a fruitful cooperation with national governments, but according to the UAE, they are affiliated to the Brotherhood and are therefore terrorist organizations.
Also on the list is the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, which is the European branch of the Muslim Brothers. It has been active among Muslim immigrants since the ’50s and has been registered as a NGO in Great Britain since 1989. Its center today is in Brussels and it federates more than a thousand (!) Islamic organizations in 30 countries: women’s associations, associations for the protection of children, student organizations, workers associations and welfare organizations.
Read the rest here.
The GMBDW has been monitoring the reactions of the various organization who almost universally say they are astonished at being included on the list, claiming to be merely innocent “civil-society” groups.
The GMBDW believes that much of the confusion over the ties of groups such as identified in the article would be resolved if there was a greater acceptance of the notion of the Global Muslim Brotherhood, a concept which we first start publicly expounding in this publication in 2007. We have noticed a trend towards increasing mention of the term over the years but until there is a far wider acceptance of the reality of the global Brotherhood, groups such as those included on the UAE list will continue to be “astonished” at being publicly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.