The Muslim Brotherhood

by Alison Pargeter

  Yet whilst the Ikhwan in Britain may, through organisations such as the MAB, have found a stronger political voice in recent years, it remains a small group with very limited influence over Britain’s Muslim communities. This is partly because many of the Ikhwani who came to Britain were students or refugees and the group was never able to spread beyond the elite. Nor has the Arab community in Britain been as settled as the South Asians who, like the North Africans in France, came en masse in response to demands for labour and settled into their own communities. For these reasons, organisations such as the MAB have not yet garnered any real grass roots support, leaving them largely irrelevant to the UK’s vibrant Islamist scene.

  Germany and the IGD

  As in the UK, the first Ikhwani activity in Germany was begun in the 1950s by students from the Arab world. However, the first Ikhwani to establish a real base for the movement in Germany was Said Ramadan, who oversaw the building of a mosque and Islamic centre in Munich. The idea for the mosque did not come from Ramadan or the Brotherhood. The project was initiated by a group of Muslims who had fought with Germany against the Russians in the Second World War. They were led by Nurredine Nakibhodscha Namangani, an Uzbek who had been an imam for one of Hitler’s SS divisions, and they also had German backing for their plan. Then a group of Ikhwani students in Munich heard about the project and called in Said Ramadan. One of these brothers, Mohamed Ali al-Mahgary, referred to Ramadan as ‘a gifted orator’, noting, ‘we all respected him’.76 Ramadan was quick to seize the opportunity to take over the mosque building commission in a bid to oust Namangani, whose traditionalist Turkic Islam was anathema to the purist Islam promoted by the Ikhwan. Ramadan was in a charmed position thanks to his generous supply of Saudi wealth; he was able to contribute an initial 1,000 marks to the mosque building commission, far outweighing the contributions of the other interested parties.77

  As part of his strategy to dominate Islamist activism in Germany, in 1959 Ramadan also organised a European Muslim Congress in Munich. The following year he took over full control of the mosque construction committee, completely sidelining Namangani.

  The mosque, which was given tax-exempt status by the West German government, was finally opened in 1973, reportedly with the help of generous contributions from Saudi Arabia. When the mosque opened, the building commission changed its name to the Islamic Community of Southern Germany, indicating its desire to extend its influence beyond the city of Munich. By this time, however, Ramadan had left Munich and the running of the mosque and organisation had been given to the Syrian Ikhwani Ghaleb Himmat. Himmat had come to Germany as a student and had little interest in what was going on inside the country.

  Under Himmat’s stewardship, the Munich mosque became a key centre for Ikhwani activity. This was not the only Brotherhood centre in Germany at this time. The town of Aachen, also known as Aix-la-Chapelle, had also become an important Ikhwani hub on account of the fact that it was home to Issam al-Attar. Al-Attar had tried to lead the Syrian organisation from his exile, but the impracticality of such a venture, added to the fact that he was embroiled in a deep conflict over the leadership of the Syrian Ikhwan, resulted in his breaking away to form his own organisation, al-Talia, which was focused on activities in Europe. By the time he settled in Aachen, al-Attar had come to represent a new current of thinking that was similar to the Ikhwan’s ideology but was largely independent from the Brotherhood. As such he only had the support of a minority of Syrian Ikhwani from the smaller and more moderate Damascus wing. Suggestions by some commentators that, ‘while the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood has chosen Munich as its base of operations in Germany, its Syrian branch is headquartered in Aachen, a German town near the Dutch border’,78 are therefore somewhat misplaced.

  However, the Bilal mosque in Aachen developed as a magnet for Islamic activism and for other Syrian Ikhwani who had fled repression. West Germany was an important place of refuge and its hostility to the Soviet Union during the Cold War meant that it was ever ready to open its doors to refugees from Arab nationalist countries that had aligned themselves with the Soviet camp. Other Syrians who joined al-Attar in Aachen included Mohamed al-Hawari, who was also part of the sidelined Damascus group and who is now a member of the European Council for Fatwa and Research. The daughter of the late Dr Hassan al-Huwaidi also resides in Aachen with her family and so Aachen was al-Huwaidi’s base during his many European visits.

  However, the main centre of organised Ikhwani activity continued to be Munich. In 1981, still under Himmat’s leadership, the Islamic Community of Southern Germany changed its name to the Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland (The Islamic Community of Germany, IGD), marking its territory over the whole country. The city drew many of the most important Ikhwani of the time. Mashour made several visits there after he fled Egypt in the early 1980s. The former Supreme Guide, Mehdi Akef, also spent time at the Munich centre. According to Egyptian intellectual Rifat Said, he was in Munich to mobilise the international tanzeem and control its financial flows.79 The Egyptian leader, who had been part of the Nizam al-Khass, was based at the centre between 1984 and 1987.

  Being in Munich was a very pioneering experience and I used to deal with the German government in a very advanced way. There were some sensitive issues and I solved them with them because I felt they were well advanced in their thinking … I used to have a conference every month in the mosque attended by thousands of Muslims from all parts of Germany. The mosque was at the entrance to the gate of an island and the inhabitants of that island complained. How did the government behave? They gave me a forest and cut down the trees and said this is yours.80

  To give an indication of how important a base Munich was at that time, Akef has explained that whilst he was there statesmen from across the Muslim world visited the mosque to pay their respects to the world’s most powerful Islamic organisation.81 He also says that the Ikhwan sought to bring the various Muslim organisations under its banner: ‘In Germany, when I lived there for a while, all our task was to unite the Muslims because there were different groups so we could be one representative to deal with the government.’82

  Evidently, Germany was a key centre for the Ikhwan, although its importance rested not so much on its ability to attract the community, which after all was limited, but rather on the presence of important personnel, some of whom had access to money. Himmat was a successful businessman and the Deputy of the Al-Taqwa bank. The bank’s head, Youssef Nada, was also on the council of the Munich mosque. The city became a kind of backroom powerhouse for the Ikhwan in the Arab world, where the Brothers could move around freely, use the Western media and presumably facilitate their financial operations.

  The events of 9/11 would change this situation. Although the IGD allegedly came under greater scrutiny by the German intelligence services in the late 1990s, it was only really after the attacks on the US that the organisation was really put under the spotlight. Shortly after the attacks, an investigation was launched into the Al-Taqwa bank, which the US accused of indirectly providing financial investment services to al-Qa‘ida. Himmat’s assets were frozen, forcing him to step down from his position as head of the IGD in 2002.

  Himmat’s post was taken over by Ibrahim El-Zayat, who continues to run the IGD today. El-Zayat is a German national of Egyptian origin with an Egyptian father and a German mother. In spite of his relative youth, he has long been involved in Islamic work and comes from a religious family with a history of Islamic activism.

  His father, Farouk El-Zayat, is the imam of the mosque in Marburg, near Cologne, and his brother Bilal, a doctor, and both his sisters are all involved in Islamic work. He is alleged to be the nephew of the famous Egyptian Islamist lawyer Muntassir el-Zayat, who was a member of al-Jama’at al-Islamiya.83 He married within the Islamic community and his wife is Sabiha Erbakan, a niece of the Turkish Islamist leader Necmettin Erbakan. She is involved in the Centre for Islamic Women’s Studies at the UOIF’s Institute for Human Sciences in Paris.84
El-Zayat’s sister is married to one of Kamal Helbawy’s sons. El-Zayat’s background is therefore clearly deeply enmeshed in the reformist Islamist tradition.

  El-Zayat’s professional career is also a typical mix of Ikhwani-style Gulf-backed Islamic activism. He was head of the Muslim Students Association in Germany and co-founder of the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisations (FEMYSO), of which he was chairman from 1996 to 2002. In 1997 he became the head of the Islamic Centre in Cologne. He is on the board of Islamic Relief and a trustee of Islamic Relief in Birmingham.85 In addition he was the European representative of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and worked in the Islamic Council in Germany which is part of the Saudi Islamic World League. He is also linked into Ikhwani-oriented networks in France, being one of the trustees of the UOIF’s school for imams at Château-Chinon.

  While El-Zayat is personally very active, the IGD has never been able to attract large numbers of members either prior to or during his leadership. Although it is able to draw a sizeable congregation to its mosques, as El-Zayat notes himself, ‘It is a body which has a very very limited membership.’86 The very fact that the whole organisation shifted its headquarters from Munich to Cologne when El-Zayat took up the post is an indication of the group’s limited influence. El-Zayat also acknowledges that when the IGD elects its Shura Council, the choice of who to elect is restricted because the number of qualified people is so small. This is partly because like most of the European Islamic organisations that follow the Ikhwani school of thought, the IGD is primarily an elitist group. It is also because, like the MSS and the MAB in Britain, the IGD has had to struggle against other Islamic currents. Given that the vast majority of Muslims living in Germany are Turkish, the Turkish organisations have always wielded the greatest influence and achieved stronger grass roots support. Where the IGD has only 600 recorded members and between thirty and forty Islamic cultural centres and places of worship, its Turkish counterpart, Millî Görüş, only one of a number of Turkish Islamic associations, has 26,500 members and between 400 and 600 cultural centres or places of worship.87

  The IGD has close ties to Millî Görüş, so much so that the two organisations share the same premises in Cologne. Millî Görüş’s General Secretary Oğuz Üçüncü has noted of the IGD, ‘We consider us as brother/sister organisations. We work very closely together … We co-ordinate our work and the executive bodies of the IGD and Millî Görüş meet twice a year.’88 Such closeness is hardly surprising given that aside from the strong dose of nationalism that characterises the Turkish organisation, Millî Görüş broadly follows a similar ideology to that of the Brotherhood. But just as with the Jama’at-e-Islami and the MAB in Britain, the IGD and Millî Görüş have not sought to overcome their ethnic differences in order to join forces.

  Ibrahim El-Zayat believes that the Turks need their own separate organisations because of the pervasive nationalism within the Turkish community and also because of language. ‘Many Turks don’t speak any language but Turkish – the first and second generation have no German. You will find very few who speak English. This limits the opportunities for mutual co-operation.’89 On sheer numbers alone, the IGD is completely dwarfed by its Turkish counterpart.

  As to the relationship between the IGD and the Ikhwan, like its counterparts in other European countries, the IGD has sought to distance itself from any such connection and has focused on its German identity. As El-Zayat emphasises, ‘It is a German institution with German membership.’ However, El-Zayat also openly admits connections with Said Ramadan and has said of the early days of the organisation: ‘Naturally there were connections [with the Brotherhood]. It was an open body that was separate from what was called the movement body. At that time the Muslim Brotherhood was forced to work conspiratorially.’90 Ghaleb Himmat has also acknowledged the influence that the Brotherhood had on the organisation whilst he was in charge. With typical Ikhwani ambiguity, Himmat declared that his mosque was open to everyone but the Ikhwani came to dominate because they were the most active. ‘If the Muslim Brotherhood considers me one of them, it is an honour for me.’91 Looking at those individuals who have been involved in the organisation over the years, not to mention the links with Saudi Arabia, the IGD has certainly grown out of the Brotherhood tradition and is typical of Ikhwani-oriented organisations in Europe.

  The IGD acknowledges that it is part of the Ikhwan’s reformist ideological tradition, but denies any organisational linkage to the movement today. Although El-Zayat accepts that the Guidance Office in Cairo is considered to be one of the IGD’s spiritual references, he insists that no institutional ties exist between his organisation and Cairo or with the Brotherhood more broadly. His desire to be considered separate from the Ikhwan is so strong that he has stated categorically that he is not a member of the Brotherhood. In 2007 he published a statement on the Brotherhood’s English language website after it had had referred to him as a Muslim Brother: ‘Counterstatement: You wrote, “Eight Muslim Brotherhood members are scheduled to be tried in absentia in front of the military tribunal because five of them are living abroad” and then mentioned my name in a wrong spelling. I declare, that I am not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.’92

  In spite of the repeated visits of Mashour and Akef to Germany in the early 1980s when the international tanzeem was being established, El-Zayat insists that the IGD was never a member of the Ikhwan’s international body. ‘I think there was never a working international tanzeem. I think it was more of an idea to have something which is an international body, but from very early on Europe didn’t understand itself as part of an organisation, but as a part of the thinking.’93 This fits with Helbawy’s explanation that the European branches had no formal role within the international Guidance Office, but reported to and consulted with the leadership indirectly. As El-Zayat also stated:

  It is not an organisational link or a clear affiliation because a clear affiliation won’t work. If you bind a body that is working in Germany to a body in Egypt or Syria it won’t work because in the end the variety of challenges that we have here are not connected to what is happening there. They cannot give instructions or say ‘you have to do this or you have to do that’. It could be not a working relationship if we were dependent on a movement in Egypt or Syria.94

  However, El-Zayat does acknowledge that there are ‘personal relations’ with the Brotherhood, but he adds: ‘this is a completely different thing. There is no link and … no directing of actions whatsoever by Egypt or by any other international body.’95

  El-Zayat clearly wants to maintain the IGD’s independence from any centre of power outside Germany. Touching on a very important point, he has also explained how Islamists in Europe are sometimes more progressive in their thinking than the Ikhwan in the Middle East:

  I think that maybe Europe has gone even beyond what the Muslim Brotherhood is thinking now as solutions. Take for example the issue of women in Islam. I am President of the IGD and my Vice President is a woman – she is in charge of many men. It is a point which you wouldn’t find in the Muslim world at all. Even in Sudan. I don’t know any Jama’at who would put any woman even as a Vice President. When I presented her I was very strict and keen on having a woman.96

  This may be more the thinking of the second generation than of Muslims in Germany more widely. As El-Zayat himself says, some members of the IGD had difficulties accepting the fact that he had chosen to have a woman as his Deputy.97

  El-Zayat has also raised concerns about the Ikhwani-oriented European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), which was established in 1997 to provide fatwas specific to Muslims living in Europe as minority communities in secular societies. This council, headed by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is controversial: although it seeks to be relevant to the lives of Muslims in Europe, many council members reside in the Middle East and have never lived in the continent. Moreover, even though the council includes scholars from other ethnic groups such as the South Asian community in Britain a
nd the Turkish community in Germany, it remains predominantly Arab, with an overwhelmingly Ikhwani flavour. (Prominent Ikhwani or Ikhwani-linked individuals on the council include its Deputy, al-Mawlawi; Sheikh Rashid al-Ghannouchi; Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Taweel in Spain; and Sheikh Mohamed al-Hawari in Germany.) It has also been contentious in so far as some of its fatwas do not sit comfortably with the concept of integrating into European society. Al-Hawari is reported to have written that adoption should be forbidden because a woman might be seen in a state of undress by a child other than her biological offspring.98 In another fatwa, which responded to a question about whether it was permissible for a Muslim to eat with non-Muslim people who are drinking wine, the ruling was that, ‘It is not permissible to sit with people who are drinking wine (alcohol), whether they are kafirs or Muslims.’99 What is notable here is not the ruling itself, but rather the use of the highly derogatory term kafirs (heathens) to describe non-Muslims.

  It is this very sort of attitude that El-Zayat has found difficult to deal with. He says that the council