Islamic terrorism in Europe 2022
First Published in the January 2023 edition of The Organiser magazine
The
28 countries of the European Union [EU] is home to about 25 million Muslims;
and their presence is currently the basis of controversy, debate, fear and in
some parts, outright hatred. Never before has the European continent witnessed
this level of mutual suspicion between mainstream European societies and
Muslims. There is increasing fear and opposition to European Muslims in the EU,
and are perceived as a threat to national identity, domestic security and the
main-stream social fabric. Mainstream society in Europe can be loosely
defined as that section of the population that believes in Christianity and its
value system. Muslims in Europe, however, believe that the majority of
Europeans reject their presence and vilify their religion.
Historically,
Islamic globalization began as early as the late Middle Ages (500 to 1400–1500 AD), and the Muslim presence in Europe
was only on the fringes of the continent, starting at the Iberian Peninsula (Spain
and Portugal) and spreading along the Mediterranean shores to other parts of
Southern Europe. Parts of the Ottoman Caliphate’s Balkan territory became
Muslim in the early modern period (1440-1500), while Tartar settlers brought
Islam to the Baltic region. In the late 19th century, Muslim
migration to Western Europe was largely connected to the empires. The first
clusters of networks of Muslims emerged after 1918, as a result of the Great
War (as World War-1 was known) which brought thousands of Muslims into Europe
and institutionalized Islam in the continent. Muslim communities emerged in
three spaces; the mosques as religious physical spaces, associations and
organizations a legal spaces and constructive and intellectual spaces expressed
through Islamic newspapers and media. Essentially, these three spaces were
occupied by individuals who identified themselves as Muslims, and focused
primarily on the formation of Islamic organizations identified by a common
religion, rather than diverse ethnic or linguistic backgrounds.
Radicalization of
these Muslim communities in Europe started in the 1960s due to the activities
of the Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in Egypt in 1928, by Islamic scholar Hassan
al-Banna, the Jamāʿat al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn, aka the
Muslim Brotherhood has spread internationally, influencing various Islamic
movements from charitable organizations to political parties, who have
different names but a singular goal – jihad against the world.
While
the Brotherhood's radical ideas have shaped the beliefs of generations of Islamist(s) over the past two decades, it has lost much of its power and appeal
in the Middle East, crushed by harsh repression from local Arab regimes and
rejected by the younger generation of Islamist(s). Europe however, has become an
incubator for the Islamist political process. Since the early 1960s, Muslim
Brotherhood members and sympathizers have moved to Europe and slowly but
steadily established a wide and well-organized network of mosques, charities,
and Islamic organizations, with the focus on expanding Islamic law throughout
Europe.
The
radicalized Islamic students who migrated to Europe from the Middle-East 45
years ago and their decedents now, are leaders of local Muslim communities that
engage with Europe’s mainstream political elite. Funded by generous and
constant financial contributions from Qatar and Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi
community, they lead and dominate a centralized network of terrorism that spans
nearly every European country. With expertise in modern rhetoric and fluent in
German, French and Dutch languages; the terrorist masterminds have gained
acceptance with members of the European governments and the media. As the
Muslim community expands rapidly due to immigration, the mainstream political
parties in Europe are engaging with them as potential vote-banks.
The
duplicitous nature of the Brotherhood is openly demonstrated by their
activities among their fellow Muslims, where while speaking in Arabic or
Turkish, they drop their ‘moderate’ façade and embrace radicalism. While
speaking in public about interfaith dialogue and social integration, they
preach hate against the western society in their mosques and private
gatherings. While publicly condemning murderous terrorist activities against
average citizens, they continue to raise funds for Hamas, al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The Europeans, forever eager to ‘understand the Muslim community’ and create a
dialogue, overlook this duplicity. This is particularly visible in Germany; not
only because it offered asylum to the first major wave of Muslim Brotherhood
immigrants, but also for accepting their rhetoric at face value and ignoring
the wider scope of the Brotherhood’s activities.
During
the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of Muslim students left the Middle East to study
at German universities, drawn not only by the German institutions' technical
reputations but also by a desire to escape repressive regimes. Beginning in
1954, several members of the Muslim Brotherhood fled from Egypt to escape its
ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser’s brutal efforts to neutralize them, and West Germany
provided a welcome refuge. West Germany’s motivations were not based simply on
compassion for the immigrants. It was based on a political decision whereby
West Germany was cutting diplomatic relations with countries that recognized
East Germany. [Till November 1989, Germany was divided by the Berlin Wall into
two separate countries; West Germany which was influenced by Western democratic
values and East Germany which was allied with the Soviet Union]. When Syria and
Egypt established diplomatic relationships with the Communist government of
East Germany, the West German government decided to welcome political refugees
from Syria and Egypt. Many were Muslim Brotherhood members already familiar
with Germany, several of whom had cooperated with the Nazis before and during
WW2.
One
of the first such members of the Brotherhood was Sa’id Ramadan, the
personal secretary to Hasan al-Banna who founded the organization. Ramadan
founded one of Germany’s three main Muslim organizations, the Islamische
Gemeinschaft Deutschland (Islamic Society of Germany, IGD), over which he
presided from 1958 to 1968. He also co-founded the Muslim World
League, a well-funded organization that the Saudi establishment uses to
spread its radical interpretation of Islam throughout the world. The U.S.
government closely monitors activities of the Muslim World League which has
been regularly accused of financing terrorism. In January 2004, the U.S. Senate
Finance Committee asked the Internal Revenue Service for its records on the
Muslim World League "as part of an investigation into possible links
between nongovernmental organizations and terrorist financing networks."
After Sa’id
Ramadan, Pakistani national Fazal Yazdani led the IGD for a brief period before
he was replaced by Ghaleb Himmat, a Syrian origin member with Italian
citizenship. During his leadership of the IGD (1973-2002) he was under scrutiny
by Western intelligence agencies for his connections to terrorism. He was one
of the founders of the Bank al-Taqwa aka the ‘Bank of the Muslim
Brotherhood’ which has financed terrorism since the mid-1990s, possibly earlier
also. Himmat
was helped by Youssef Nada, one of the Brotherhood's financial masterminds to
run Al-Taqwa and a web of companies headquartered in locations such as
Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Bahamas, countries which maintain few
regulations on monetary origin or destination. Both Himmat and Nada have
regularly financed the activities Hamas and the Algerian Islamic Salvation
Front and had reportedly set-up a line-of-credit for Osama
bin Laden’s al-Qaeda operations.
Under the
leadership of Ramadan and Himmat, the Brotherhood sponsored the construction of
the Islamic Center of Munich in 1960, which was fully aided by large donations
from the Middle-East kingdoms. According to the 1967 article in Sueddeutsche Zeitung (a German daily newspaper published from Munich) King Fahd of Saudi
Arabia donated 80,000 German Marks (approximately 450,000 Euros of today). German
Intelligence states that the Islamic Centre of Munich has been one of the
European headquarters for the Brotherhood since its foundation. The centre
publishes a magazine, Al-Islam, whose efforts (according to intelligence
agencies) are financed by the Bank al-Taqwa. Al-Islam shows explicitly
how the German Brothers reject the concept of a secular state, and its February
2002 issue states clearly that;
“In the long run, Muslims cannot be satisfied
with the acceptance of German family, estate, and trial law - Muslims should
aim at an agreement between the Muslims and the German state with the goal of a
separate jurisdiction for Muslims”
The Islamic Centre of Munich is one of the important members of the IGD
(Islamische
Gemeinschaft Deutschland) and is
a clear example of how the Muslim
Brotherhood has gained power in Europe through its base in Germany.
Himmat was succeeded by Ibramin el-Zayat, a German born Muslim activist
of Egyptian descent, and known to be a charismatic leader of numerous youth
organizations. Zayat understood the importance of focusing on the new
generation of German Muslims and worked consistently to recruit young Muslims
into Islamic organizations. While the German authorities have no doubt that he
is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, they have also linked him to the ‘World
Assembly of Muslim Youth’ [WAMY], a Saudi sponsored NGO that seeks to spread
Wahhabism, the radical and intolerant interpretation of Islam, throughout the
world through its schools and literature. WAMY,
which is controlled by the Muslim World League, has the stated goal of "arming
the Muslim youth with full confidence in the supremacy of the Islamic system
over other systems." It is the largest Muslim youth organization in
the world and has unlimited financial resources.
In 1991 WAMY
published a book called Tawjihat Islamiya (Islamic Views) that
stated, "Teach our children to love taking revenge on the Jews and the
oppressors, and teach them that our youngsters will liberate Palestine and
Al-Quds [Jerusalem] when they go back to Islam and make jihad for the sake of
Allah.” The sentiments in Tawjihat Islamiya are the rule rather than
the exception and are taught even today across European mosques and madrassas.
German police have
linked Zayat to Institut Européen des Sciences Humaines, a French school
that prepares European imams. Several radical clerics lecture at the school and
several European intelligence agencies accuse the school of spreading religious
hatred. German authorities also highlight the fact that he is involved in
several money laundering investigations. His association with officials of Milli
Görüş (National Vision, in Turkish) has attracted the most attention from
European Intelligence agencies. Milli Görüş, which has 30,000 members and
perhaps another 100,000 sympathizers, claims to defend the rights of Germany's immigrant
Turkish population, giving them a voice in the democratic political arena while
"preserving their Islamic identity."
But Milli Görüş
has another agenda. While publicly declaring its interest in democratic debate
and a willingness to see Turkish immigrants integrated into European societies,
many Milli Görüş leaders have expressed contempt for democracy and Western
values. The Bundesverfassungsschutz, Germany's domestic intelligence
agency, has repeatedly warned about Milli Görüş' activities, describing the
group in its annual reports as a "foreign extremist organization."
The Saudis created
the Islamische Konzil Deutschland (Islamic Council of Germany) under the
leadership of Abdullah al-Turki, the well-connected dean of the bin Saud
University in Riyadh, with other top positions being held by leaders of
Milli Gorus and the Islamic Center of Munich. While an official German
parliament report describes the Islamische Konzil as just "another
Sunni organization," such an assumption indicates a dangerous
misunderstanding of the Saudi relationship to German Islamists and their
sponsorship of terrorist activities. Back in 1994, the Islamists realized that
a ‘united coalition’ would empower them with greater political relevance and
influence. Nineteen organizations united together to form the Zentralrat der
Muslime [Central Council of Muslims in Germany]. Nadeem Elyas, the
Zentralrat president has been linked to Christian Ganczarski, an Al-Qaeda
operative currently jailed as one of the masterminds of the 2002 attack on a
synagogue in Tunisia. Ganczarski, a German of Polish descent who converted to
Islam, told authorities that Al-Qaeda recruited him at the Islamic University
of Medina where Elyas had sent him to study, with all
expenses paid for by Saudi donors. In an interview with Die Welt (a
German daily newspaper), Elyas has admitted to having sent hundreds of German
Muslims to study at one of the most radical universities in Saudi Arabia.
With many
organizations operating under different names, the Muslim Brotherhood fools the
German politicians who believe they are consulting a spectrum of opinion, while
in reality it is the radical interpretation of Islam as expressed by the Muslim
Brotherhood and not that of traditional Islam. With an unending access to
massive Saudi financing, the Muslim Brotherhood has managed to become the voice
of the Muslims in Germany. While the Brotherhood and its Saudi financiers have
consolidated their hold in Germany, they have spread like cancer across other
European countries. With generous and unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia and
Qatar, combined with the Brotherhood’s meticulous organization structure that
exploits the weaknesses of the European elites, it has gained prominent
positions throughout Europe. In France the extremist Union
des Organisations Islamiques de France (Union of Islamic Organizations of
France) has become the predominant organization in the government's Islamic
Council. In Italy, the extremist Unione delle Comunita' ed Organizzazioni
Islamiche in Italia (Union of the Islamic Communities and Organizations in
Italy) is the government's prime partner in dialogue regarding Italian Islamic
issues.
The
Muslim Brotherhood’s acceptance into mainstream European society and their
unchallenged rise to power would not have been possible had European elites
been more vigilant, valued substance over rhetoric, and understood the
motivations of those financing and building these Islamist organizations. The
European’s weakness lies in many factors, mainly because their social
integration policies have been erratic and inconsistent and assuming that only
a tiny minority of Muslims are engaged in radical activities. The root of this
assumption is the fear of being accused as racists by the immigrants and their
decedents. Islamic radicals have learned that they can silence almost everybody
with the accusation of islamophobia. The response to any criticism of Muslim Brotherhood-linked
organizations is outcries of racism and anti-Muslim persecution. European
politicians have failed to understand that by interacting with radicals like
the Muslim Brotherhood, they empower and grant legitimacy to terrorists. This
creates a cycle of radicalization where the greater the political legitimacy
granted to the Brotherhood, the more opportunity they receive to influence and
radicalize new generations of European Muslims.
While
Germany is being taken over politically through radicalization of the Muslim
population, France has been the top target for Islamic radical attacks.
According to official Europol data, France has been the targeted by more jihadi
attacks than any other EU member nation since 2014, and that 300 French citizens
have been killed in these attacks. France is the ‘perfect enemy’ for Islamic
Jihadists since it has the largest Muslim population (about 7% of the
population), the biggest Jewish population (1%) and a very important legacy of
Christianism.
The first
major terrorist attack on French soil in recent years took place on January 7,
2015, when assailants operating on behalf of al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch stormed
the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with assault
rifles, killing 12 people. In the coming days, an associate of the gunmen
killed five people in the name of ISIS; one policewoman and four patrons at a
supermarket in Paris.
The Charlie
Hebdo attacks were the deadliest on French soil for 50 years, but even they
were surpassed on November 13, 2015; when eight ISIS gunmen and suicide bombers
targeted a variety of locations throughout Paris and its environs—cafes,
restaurants, the national stadium, and a concert hall—collectively killing 130
people and wounding 350 more in the deadliest attack on French soil since World
War II.
Since
then, ISIS has continued to inspire French residents to terror. On July 14,
2016, a Tunisian-born resident of Nice drove a truck into a crowd celebrating
Bastille Day at Nice’s beachside promenade, killing 86 people and wounding more
than 430 others. The attack came between two other ISIS-claimed attacks: on
June 13, a convicted terrorist stabbed two police officers at their home in
Magnanville, and on July 26, two ISIS assailants stormed the Saint-Etienne
parish church in Normandy, killing an elderly priest.
These
attacks and other attempts—including a September 2016 attempt by female
jihadists to explode gas canisters near the Notre Dame cathedral—have
highlighted the major strain on France’s counter-terrorism infrastructure as it
struggles to monitor an estimated 15,000 terrorism suspects in the country.
France is the largest source of Western fighters to Iraq and Syria, with an
estimated 2,000 French nationals having traveled to the conflict zone as of
May 2016. The country also suffers from a major radicalization problem within
its prisons, where an estimated 1,400 inmates are believed to be radicalized.
France
has been left struggling with the question of why it has become a prime target
and how it should respond. As per President Macron, France is being targeted by
terrorists because of its “freedom of expression, right to believe, or not,
and its way of life.” He claims that a form of “Islamist separatism” has
found fertile ground for its ideals in some parts of the country. For over
forty years, successive French presidents have sought to manage the state’s
relationship with an ethnically and religiously diverse Muslim community. In
France, the concept of laïcité (secularism) enjoins a strict delineation
between the state and the private sphere of personal beliefs. Designed in
origin to protect individuals from state intrusion, and the state from
religious influence, it has in recent years been increasingly wielded to do the
exact opposite: encroaching evermore into the private sphere of Muslim citizens
from defining dress codes to diet and religious education, whereby the state
has sought to influence each of these in recent years, only to be confronted by
the strength of a Republican framework where the courts have upheld the
original principles of laïcité.
Discrimination
against Muslims in France is prevalent in every sector of the French society;
from housing to employment and interactions with the Police. According to the
French government’s own survey, 42% of Muslims have stated that they have
experienced discrimination due to their religion, a figure which rises to 60%
among women who wear the Abbaya and Hijab. Around 67% of French Arab Muslims
believe that their faith is perceived negatively, while 64% said the same in
reference to their ethnicity. Many consider this as a form of creeping
authoritarianism that is indicative of political racism. Proposed new laws will
allow more tighter control over civil society, that will specifically include
Muslim religious organizations and where their leaders will be required to
conform to a ‘Republican charter’, a modern-day patriotism test imposed on the
Muslim community. Under these laws, Imams will have to be trained through a
state sanctioned organization which will ensure their conformity with the
state’s version of laïcité (secularism).
Almost
every country of the European Union has been the target of Islamic terrorism.
The EU has introduced new policies with the cooperation of its member states to
track the radicalization, funding and sponsorship of terrorism and prevent
future attacks, however the EU’s refusal to accept the role of Saudi Arabia and
Qatar in funding terrorism is still a hurdle to be overcome.
“We are
determined to protect Europe’s societies and its people. We will uphold our
common values and European way of life. We will safeguard our pluralist societies and
continue with firm resolve to combat all forms of violence which target people
on the basis of their actual or supposed ethnic origin, or their religious
belief or on the basis of other types of prejudice”.
EU HOME AFFAIRS MINISTERS -Joint Statement 2021
Compiled by Sardar
Sanjay Matkar
For Organizer
Magazine.
References:
- 1)
Khalid
Duran, "Jihadism in Europe," The Journal of Counterterrorism and
Security International.
- 2)
Georges
Lepre, "Himmler's Bosnian Division: The Waffen SS Handschar Division
1943-45”.
- 3)
"Prasidenten
der IGD," Islamische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland website.
- 4)
Fouad
Ajami, "Tariq Ramadan," The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 7,
2004.
- 5)
Official
dossier on Ahmed Nasreddin, Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza
Democratica (Italian secret service, SISDE)
- 6)
Report
on radical Islam, Baden Württenberg state Verfassungsschutzbericht, 2003.
- 7)
Report
on Ibrahim el-Zayat, Cologne police, Aug. 27, 2003,
- 8)
David
Kane, FBI senior special agent, affidavit in "Supplemental Declaration in
Support of Pre-Trial Detention," United States of America v. Soliman S.
Biheiri, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The
affidavit also details WAMY's links to the Palestinian terrorist organization
Hamas.
- 9)
Michael Waller,
testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Terrorism,
Technology, and Homeland Security, Oct. 14, 2003.
- 10)
"Animosity
toward the Jews, " A Handy Encyclopedia of Contemporary Religions and
Sects (WAMY), FBI translation from Arabic; Steven Emerson, statement to the
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, July 9, 2003;
- 11)
Hugo
Micheron, a postdoctoral research associate focusing on Islamic extremism at
Princeton University,
