The Muslim Brotherhood

by Alison Pargeter

  Britain and the MAB

  Britain has long had a reputation for being a hotbed of Islamist activism. This was especially true during the 1980s and 1990s, to the point where its capital city was dubbed Londonistan. By this point the country had become home to a wide array of Islamist groups from moderate to militant and was a veritable melting pot of ideologies and organisations. Among those groups who were active in the UK was of course the Ikhwan, who like the myriad of other Islamist currents there sought to promote its dawa and to bring people to its way of thinking. It is because of these competing ideologies and currents, as well as the presence of large South Asian migrant communities, that the Ikhwan in Britain has been far more difficult to pin down than its counterparts in France. In fact, Ikhwani activity in the UK has tended to revolve around a few key personalities and to be less institutionalised than across the Channel.

  The Brotherhood’s presence in Britain dates back to the 1950s, when Ikhwani students from the Arab world came to study in the UK. After 1954, they were joined by a number of key Egyptian brothers fleeing the clampdowns of President Nasser, who spent some time touring Britain to spread the word about the atrocities being committed by the nationalist regime, which was still being hailed as a great triumph by many Arab communities.44 However, the first solid Muslim Brotherhood activity in Britain came in the form of two student groups. The first was the Muslim Students’ Society (MSS), set up in 1961, and the second was the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), established the following year. Both societies were founded by Ikhwani who had strong links to the mother branch in Egypt. This included the Egyptian Sheikh Ahmed al-Ahsan, who was studying in the UK and who has been described as Sheikh Yuuf al-Qaradawi’s twin because the two men went to school together and trained at Al-Azhar at the same time. Another key figure was the Indian scholar Mustafa Azami, who had been imprisoned in Egypt for his Ikhwani activities and had come to the UK to continue his PhD at Cambridge. With them were a number of Iraqi and Syrian Ikhwani students.

  The main tasks of these organisations were to spread dawa, to organise demonstrations in front of Arab embassies and to support Muslim students in the UK by providing them with accommodation and ‘helping them not to melt in this society’.45 The main difference between the two groups was that the MSS was a purely Ikhwani organisation whose followers ‘believed very strongly in the ideas of Hassan al-Banna and in the thoughts of Hassan al-Banna’,46 whilst FOSIS had a broader platform and sought to appeal to those beyond the Brotherhood. As such MSS was primarily an Arab organisation whereas members of the South Asian community became involved in FOSIS, bringing in the influence of Islamist groups from Pakistan. As Pakistani writer Ziauddin Sardar, who was the General Secretary of FOSIS in the early 1970s, explained, ‘Like most members of FOSIS, I was strongly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Jama’at-e-Islami of Pakistan.’47 Both groups were very active and were able to attract large numbers of Muslims to their events. For example, Egyptian Ikhwan Dr Kamal Helbawy gave a series of lectures in the UK in the mid-1970s on behalf of the MSS which he asserts were attended by between two and three thousand people.48

  Among those Ikhwani who joined these organisations at the time were figures such as Ashur Shamis, Alamin Osman and the Iraqi Osama Tikriti. It was also at this time that the Muslim Welfare House in Finsbury Park in North London was established. Inaugurated in 1970, this organisation aimed to provide support to Muslim students in the UK. It became another key Ikhwani hub in Britain and was part of the Brotherhood’s network there. The centre continues to be a base for the Ikhwan; one of its imams explained that the Ikhwan still has its offices there.49

  Said Ramadan also played a part in helping to establish the Ikhwan in Britain. In 1964 Ramadan set up his Islamic centre in London along with a group of fellow Islamists including the Iraqi Riad Al Droubie and the Sudanese Ja’far Sheikh Idris. The latter was a member of the Sudanese Ikhwan who had a reputation for being a purist; in the 1970s he broke away from Hassan al-Turabi, whom he later charged with apostasy. The Islamic centre became another key focal point for Ikhwani ideas. Ramadan himself maintained strong connections with FOSIS and was a regular visitor to their head office.

  Although relatively small, these organisations were what Helbawy has described as the ‘first institutional nucleus of the Ikhwan in Britain’.50 However, as in many European centres, the relationship between these organisations and the Muslim Brotherhood was never clear. As Helbawy puts it:

  They never said ‘we are Ikhwan’ or established an Ikhwan centre publicly … MSS and FOSIS and the Muslim Welfare House were the institutions … They were not under the Muslim Brotherhood although they received the leaders from abroad, they helped them, they trusted them. The only [Brotherhood] public organisation or institution was when I started the Muslim Brotherhood media centre in 1994 or ’95.51

  These organisations may not have been directly under the control of the Ikhwan but its influence was unmistakable. Aside from the fact that the organisations had been established by members of the Brotherhood and were in many cases run by Ikhwani, they also hosted some of the most influential members of the Ikhwan at their events. The MSS has hosted numerous Ikhwani figures over the years including some of the most important individuals in the movement such as Hassan al-Banna’s son Saif al-Islam, former Murshids Sheikh Hamid Abu Nasser and Mustafa Mashour, as well as Dr. Hassan al-Huwaidi and Hassan al-Turabi.52

  Moreover, these groups were certainly promoting Ikhwani ideas and distributing key Brotherhood texts among Muslim students. As the climate in the Arab world and inside the Brotherhood radicalised during the 1960s and 1970s with the publication of texts by Sayyid Qutb, these ideas also came to gain currency in the West. Sardar says: ‘The trials and tribulations of Sayyid Qutb resonated and had a very real meaning for us. Many older members of FOSIS had not only witnessed the events of Qutb’s life but lived their own lives through them. We constantly read his commentaries on the Qur’an, In the Shade of the Quran, and chanted the slogans of the Brotherhood.’53

  Qutb’s famous text Milestones was also popular; Sardar explains how ‘A truly appalling translation, complete with legions of typographical errors, was published in Kuwait and distributed free to members of FOSIS.’54 This enthusiasm was hardly surprising: Muslims in Britain had also become swept up in the Islamic revivalism that was taking hold across the Islamic world and that seemed to offer such promise after the crushing disappointment of the Arab nationalist era.

  In spite of its widening support base the Ikhwan in Britain did not evolve into one overarching public organisation until well into the 1990s and operated in a far less formalised way than its counterparts in France, for example. As Ashur Shamis explains, ‘What existed in the UK were members from all over the Arab world affiliated to their [Ikhwani] groups back home, if such groups existed. These would work together as much as was practically possible. These people were not permanent residents here. It was a makeshift existence. There was no independent [British] group.’55

  There were several reasons for this. Firstly, given the nature of migration patterns based upon the colonial experience, the most populous Muslim communities in Britain came from South Asia, leaving Arabs as a minority within a minority. Unlike in France, where the Muslim community was predominantly North African, the Ikhwani in Britain had to compete with a range of Islamic associations linked to Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. In spite of aspirations to the umma, even when there were close ideological connections between Arab and South Asian groups, these ethnic barriers could not be fully overcome. To take one example, although the Pakistani Jama’at-e-Islami essentially shared the Brotherhood’s ideological platform and both organisations worked within FOSIS, these two groups were not prepared to merge into one organisation. As Dr Kamal Helbawy has noted, ‘When we were in Pakistan, if anyone [Pakistani] came to me and said I would like to join the Ikhwan, I would say, go and join Jamaat-al-Islami.’56 As such, there was less motivation and oppo
rtunity to come together under one large umbrella that would enable the Ikhwan to act as the primary representatives of the Muslim community in the UK.

  The Ikhwan in Britain therefore relied heavily upon the presence of important Ikhwani figures who visited the country on a regular basis and made themselves available to the brothers there. This included some at the apex of the Brotherhood such as Omar al-Tilimsani, Mustafa Mashour, Hassan al-Turabi and Abdul Majid. They acted as informal guides to the other British-based brothers. ‘In Britain there were senior brothers who were considered as a reference point. If someone needed anything, they rang him and said, “What do you advise us?” They were like institutions.’57 That is not to say that there were not leaders of the Ikhwani in Britain at the time. At one point the Sudanese brother Alamin Osman was in charge of the brothers in the UK. However, this was a much more informal outfit that the UOIF in France.

  Although the Ikhwan in the UK was still working through the MSS, FOSIS and the Muslim Welfare House, it was certainly part of an international Ikhwani consultation process. In view of its size, it was not awarded a place within the international tanzeem’s Guidance Office. Ikhwani groups in Europe were generally considered to be less important than those in the Arab world, not least because there was no chance of the Ikhwan in the West ever acting as an alternative to the state. As Helbawy explained, ‘In Arab countries there were hopes to have an Islamic state. In Europe they are needed only for dawa. They are not expecting these people here to participate in the establishment of an Islamic state.’58 But although these European groups were not able to participate directly in the formal institutions of the international tanzeem, they remained a key part of the consultation process by reporting to the leadership in Cairo on a regular basis. Every time an important Ikhwani figure came to the UK, the British brothers were expected to submit a written report detailing their activities, stance and any particular problems or issues that were affecting them. According to Helbawy:

  Britain was one of the countries where they had to give a report every time … France came later but it was the same. We have people in Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany – whenever a responsible man from the Brotherhood comes for a visit everyone would like to see him and he would like to hear from everyone and carries this information back to the leadership … This is the way the Muslim Brotherhood works.59

  The lack of an official Ikhwani oriented organisation in the UK came to create problems within the wider Brotherhood movement. Some of these problems arose out of the fact that by the 1980s the UK had become a major centre of media activity. The brothers in Britain took full advantage of this fact and began publishing statements and giving interviews to the Arab media based in London. Their ability to use the media in this way came to be resented by some brothers in Egypt, who felt that those abroad were bolstering their own credentials at the expense of the local struggle in Egypt.60 Moreover, on occasions the Ikhwan in London sent out contradictory messages to those being issued from Cairo. In 1981, for example, the Egyptian Ikhwan issued a statement about the Iran–Iraq war, denouncing the Iraqi regime and seemingly backing the Iranian side because of their Islamic revolution.61 Shortly afterwards, a statement on the same topic was issued from the UK in the name of ‘The World Muslim Brotherhood Organisation’ and circulated by FOSIS. This statement took a different approach, seemingly treating Iran and Iraq as equals: ‘The Muslim Brotherhood calls for putting an end to this war in order to direct the Muslim efforts towards the real battlefield with the international Judaism and confronting its dangers against Islam and Muslims all over the world.’62

  However, Helbawy’s arrival in London in the 1990s heralded a new phase in Ikhwani activity in the UK. In 1992 Helbawy decided to set up a media centre in London, breaking with tradition by publicly declaring it as a Muslim Brotherhood office. The main idea was to provide information about the situation in the Islamic world, especially in Egypt, Jordan and Syria. It issued an Eid message in February 1996 that read:

  This Eid has come at a time when the Muslim umma is in great pain and distress. A large part of Muslim umma is still suffering under persecution and oppression. Palestine is a bleeding sore in the heart of the Middle East. In Afghanistan, the Muslims continue to suffer; Kashmir is groaning under the weight of foreign occupation, Bosnia’s wounds are painfully fresh, and Chechnya’s courageous resistance to oppression has yet to witness the dawn of freedom from the ‘evil empire’. Similarly, the Muslims in Algeria and Central Asia, and other places are embroiled in disastrous civil war and fighting. Muslim minorities in different countries are still suffering from effects of discrimination and prejudice against them.63

  Helbawy, who was very active, was soon given the post of the Brotherhood’s spokesman in the West, which he took up in 1995. However, as explained in Chapter Three, this did not work out due to differences with Maimoun al-Hodeibi in Cairo.

  Undeterred, Helbawy decided to continue with his Islamic activities, although this time he opted to keep some distance from the core of the Brotherhood in Cairo. In 1997 along with a number of other brothers he launched a new umbrella organisation called the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). MAB was based in Kilburn, a run-down suburb of northwest London. The new organisation was to be a platform for the Ikhwan as well as being open to others who were not necessarily members of the Brotherhood but who shared a similar outlook and understanding of Islam. Again, the decision not to link it directly to the Brotherhood was a strategic move that took into account the very particular situation in which Muslims found themselves in Europe. Helbawy explains:

  It was a British extension of Islamic dawa because saying that it is exactly like the Muslim Brotherhood would be difficult in the West … Because if you go to the manhaj (methodology) of the Ikhwan you will find that in the East they are fighting for an Islamic state, for freedom, against dictatorship. We don’t have anything like this here. So we were an extension, a tributary, to support just causes whether Islamic or not.64

  However, to date there is little evidence to suggest that the MAB has focused much if any attention on non-Islamic causes. A quick look at the organisation’s website news page reveals that the spotlight is almost exclusively on Islamic issues, more often than not on Islamic issues in the Arab world. The organisation remained a largely Arab affair; according to Hassan al-Khatib who chaired its Shura Council, ‘We mainly come from Arabic communities and therefore Arabic will be MAB’s first language and English the second language.’65 In spite of the increased focus on integration into European society and its claim to ‘represent British Muslims on all levels’,66 Arabic is still of vital importance. A job advertisement posted on its website in January 2008 for an Education and Sharia Consultant specified that the candidate should speak Arabic as well as English. This is an organisation that remains very much the domain of Arabs.

  In traditional Ikhwani style the MAB has concentrated primarily on students and the middle classes. Shortly after the organisation was set up, Azzam Tamimi proudly declared that the founders ‘are a brand of people who are the cream of society and come from diverse backgrounds and are highly qualified in respective fields’.67 These accolades notwithstanding, the MAB has been unable to make any real inroads into the Muslim community in Britain. Its profile is far lower than that of the Muslim Council of Britain, often considered as its sister organisation, which is regarded as the main organisation for the UK’s South Asian communities. The MAB appears still to be focused mainly around the key personalities who set it up, making little real outreach into the community.

  Needless to say, the MAB became increasingly keen to distance itself from the Brotherhood in recent years. Its leader, the Somali Ikhwani Ahmed Sheikh, has categorically stated that the MAB is not part of the formal structure of the international Muslim Brotherhood.68 He has also said ‘our only link with the Egyptians is understanding. We co-ordinate over some activities.’69 The official line of the MAB is as follows:

  The MAB enjoys good relatio
ns with every mainstream Islamic organisation in the UK and abroad. Among them is Muslim Brotherhood which is well respected not only by the common people on the street throughout the Arab and Muslim countries but also by politicians, intellectuals and opinion-makers in most Arab countries … MAB reserves the right to be proud of the humane notions and principles of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has proven to be an inspiration to Muslims, Arab and otherwise for many decades. We also reserve the right to disagree with or divert from the opinion and line of the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other organisation, Muslim or otherwise on any issue at hand.70

  Nonetheless, it is undeniable that most of the senior leadership of the MAB are or were at one stage heavily involved in the Ikhwan. Aside from Helbawy, Azzam Tamimi was active in Jordan within the Brotherhood and the Islamic Action Front.71 Anas Tikriti, meanwhile, came from a family associated with the Ikhwan, given that his father Osama was head of the Iraqi branch of the Brotherhood.

  The MAB may appear to be independent from the structures of the Muslim Brotherhood but the informal linkages are undeniable. Moreover, some figures within the MAB still consider themselves part of the Brotherhood movement. One young member of the MAB, Jamal el-Shayyal, who spoke on behalf of the organisation at the Stop the War Coalition conference on 11 January 2003, stated that his organisation was proud to be affiliated with the Brotherhood.72

  He went on to explain during an interview with The Weekly Worker magazine: ‘As the Muslim Brotherhood, we have never seen a Muslim state … Officially, we emerged in the mid-1990s. Every single Muslim organisation in Britain – apart from three – was set up under the influence of the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood. We have gone from strength to strength.”73 Such ambiguity does little to assuage suspicions about the MAB and its links to the Brotherhood.

  Like the UOIF, the MAB has been keen in recent years to promote a more Europeanised version of Islam, one that fits with being a minority community. Ahmed Sheikh supports the view that a new fiqh (school of Islamic jurisprudence) is required specifically for Muslims living in the West.74 They have also sought to work as a lobby group engaging in local politics. The MAB channelled huge efforts into opposing the UK’s role in the Iraqi invasion of 2003 and in 2004 it called on Muslims in Britain to vote only for candidates from parties that had steadfastly opposed the invasion of Iraq or any British military involvement there.75 Yet it clearly advocated that Muslims participate in the electoral process. The MAB also threw its weight behind the former leftist London mayor Ken Livingstone, who controversially hosted Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in London. In addition it worked closely with non-Muslim organisations such as the left-wing Stop the War Coalition to organise anti-war demonstrations.