Credit To GIOR Editor For Revealing European Muslim Brotherhood Structure

For­mer Dutch jour­nal­ist and Islamism expert Carel Bren­del is report­ing that in 2020, the main Euro­pean Mus­lim Broth­er­hood umbrel­la Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (CEM) had mis­tak­en­ly unveiled the movement’s far-reach­ing orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture in their website’s  “About Us” sec­tion. Accord­ing to Brendel’s blog:

In the spring of 2020, a pre­sen­ta­tion appeared on the Face­book of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (CEM), which elab­o­rat­ed on the his­to­ry of this orga­ni­za­tion, and gave a neat list of all its com­po­nents and insti­tu­tions. The CEM was recent­ly cre­at­ed as a con­tin­u­a­tion of the Fed­er­a­tion of Islam­ic Organ­i­sa­tions in Europe (FIOE), which is seen by friend and foe and also by Dutch inte­ri­or min­is­ters as the umbrel­la organ­i­sa­tion of the Euro­pean Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (MB). The About Us was there­fore so remark­able because FIOE/CEM has done every­thing in the past to obscure its ori­gins and ram­i­fi­ca­tions. The same goes for the orga­ni­za­tions men­tioned in the Face­book arti­cle, which are used to flat­ly deny their ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. But sud­den­ly there it was in black and white. The Forum of Euro­pean Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tions (FEMYSO, the stu­dent and youth umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion), Europe Trust (the real estate branch), the Euro­pean Coun­cil for Fat­wa and Research (ECFR, for guide­lines and advice to Euro­pean Mus­lims), the Euro­pean Insti­tute for Human Sci­ences (IESH, the train­ing insti­tute), the Euro­pean Coun­cil of Imams (ECI) […] and the Euro­pean Forum of Mus­lim Women (EFOMW, the Euro­pean wom­en’s umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion) were cre­at­ed by the FIOE. In doing so, the orga­ni­za­tion itself con­firmed in one fell swoop every­thing that intel­li­gence ser­vices and researchers have report­ed about this move­ment in the past. [Trans­lat­ed from Dutch orig­i­nal using Google.]

Read the rest here.

The CEM, pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Fed­er­a­tion of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions in Europe (FIOE), describes itself as a “cul­tur­al orga­ni­za­tion, with hun­dreds of mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions spread across 28 Euro­pean States, all sub­scrib­ing to a com­mon belief in a method­ol­o­gy based on mod­er­a­tion and bal­ance, which rep­re­sents the tol­er­ance of Islam.”  In real­i­ty, the CEM is an umbrel­la group that com­pris­es the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) in Europe. The CEM has a head­quar­ters office in Brus­sels and has had some suc­cess in posi­tion­ing itself as a “dia­log part­ner” for the EU and oth­er impor­tant institutions.

In his piece, Bren­del cred­its the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) Senior Edi­tor, in par­tic­u­lar for his past work in high­light­ing the movement’s lob­by­ing efforts car­ried out in coop­er­a­tion with Euro­pean polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions. Bren­del also refers to an exten­sive 2008 report authored by the GIOR Senior Edi­tor about the FIOE/CEM and that already described, in detail, the group’s his­to­ry, and orga­ni­za­tion­al structure.