Anti-corruption investigations in Algeria are starting to give the Qatari authorities a cold sweat. According to our sources, in at least two cases, the investigations reveal the involvement of high Qatari personalities and several figures among the “protected” of Doha within the European networks of the Muslim Brotherhood in the financial circuits used by the Bouteflika clan to loot the country’s wealth.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been established in Europe more than 60 years ago. It is the result of three successive generations of activists and preachers. But the European influence of the Brotherhood has increased considerably since the mid-1990s. Thanks, in particular, to the accession to power of the former Emir of Qatar, Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who sealed a strategic alliance with one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s masterminds, the infamous Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi…
The latest find of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) is a smartphone app, launched with great fanfare last April.
Never has a Western document provoked such panic among the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood. The most inflamed see it as a “declaration of war” and threaten to take revenge. The most cunning adopt a low profile, fearing a ban on the Brotherhood.
On 23 August 1973, a muezzin called for the first time for prayer from a mosque in Bavaria: the brand-new Islamic centre located on the outskirts of Munich, in the middle of the woods. At that time, West Germany had only five mosques. The Munich one cost five million Marks.
Established in Germany since the late 1950s, the Muslim Brotherhood holds an almost total grip on Islamic places of worship and sociocultural associations. This is done through two branches of the Brotherhood : one is Arab, imported into Germany by a trio of leaders of the Tanzim al-Dawali (Saïd Ramadan, Ali Ghaleb Himmat and Youssef Nada), and the other Turkish, controlled by the Erbakan clan, one of the most influential families in the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Turkey.
A graduate of Oriental History and Philology, Michael Privot converted to Islam at the age of 19.In addition to his position as head of CECIV in his hometown of Verviers, Privot contributed, during his years of activism within the Brotherhood, to the creation of several Muslim Brotherhood’s organisations. The most virulent of which was Empowering Belgian Muslims (EmBeM).
Michael Privot says, however, that EmBeM has never been formally affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. When he co-founded it in 2013, with Fatima Zibouh, Privot had indeed already broken with the Muslim Brotherhood for more than a year. He acknowledges, however, that the co-founders of EmBeM were people he had known before in the Brotherhood.
Belgium has two main poles linked to the Muslim Bortherhood’s movement, around which a number of local associations and satellite organisations gravitate. But, the European capital is also coveted by several pan-European organisations of the Brotherhood whose main activity is lobbying the European institutions.
Who are the representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood in France? And what are they worth within the hexagonal Islamist nebula? Although there are no precise figures on the number of militants and even fewer on the supporters of the Brotherhood, it is indisputable that it has known a growing presence and influence in France over the past twenty years thanks in particular to the entry it has been able to make into the most prominent associations and organisations representing Muslim communities. And also thanks to the generous funding provided by Qatar.
From the book “Qatar Papers”, written by Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, readers have mainly retained the financial importance of the projects developed by the gas emirate in Europe through the NGO Qatar Charity. And also the salary of 35,000 euros paid each month to Tariq Ramadan by Qatar Foundation, created by Sheikha Moza, the mother of Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, 38 years old and the Emir of Qatar since 2013.
