Daughter of Dutch Muslim Brotherhood Leader and European Muslim Brotherhood Youth Group Denies Brotherhood Ties

Dutch Green Par­ty par­lia­men­tary can­di­date Kau­thar Bouchal­likht has giv­en a first press inter­view after a recent media storm regard­ing her posi­tion on the board of FEMYSO, a Euro­pean Mus­lim youth orga­ni­za­tion tied to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In her inter­view with a Dutch news­pa­per, she denied any aware­ness of the organization’s Broth­er­hood ties:

Novem­ber 23, 2020 Bouchal­likht has been dis­cred­it­ed for some­thing the can­di­date com­mit­tee did not men­tion. Until Decem­ber 1 this year, she is also vice-pres­i­dent of Femyso, a Brus­sels-based umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion that cov­ers var­i­ous Islam­ic youth move­ments. Femyso receives a sub­sidy from the Euro­pean Union and is a dis­cus­sion part­ner of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. This umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion is also seen by a num­ber of experts as an exten­sion of the con­tro­ver­sial Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion that a par­ty like Groen­Links does not like. And that begs the ques­tion of what Bouchal­likht is doing on the can­di­date list. “Femyso is a legit­i­mate orga­ni­za­tion,” she empha­sizes. “I stand for rad­i­cal equal­i­ty myself. I don’t care what some­one’s gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or col­or is. I have nev­er noticed any con­nec­tion with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood myself. I also don’t want to have any­thing to do with that ideology.

(Trans­lat­ed from Dutch via Google.)

Read the rest here.

The inter­view came after a report by for­mer jour­nal­ist and Dutch blog­ger Carel Bren­del revealed that Bouchal­likht had omit­ted her vice-pres­i­den­cy of FEMYSO in her offi­cial can­di­date biog­ra­phy. This result­ed in a media storm prompt­ing the Dutch Green Par­ty as well as Bouchallikht’s own orga­ni­za­tion to come out in her defense, call­ing the alle­ga­tions “demo­niz­ing” and “ini­ti­at­ed by the far-right.” Accord­ing to a recent state­ment pub­lished on the FEMYSO website:

Novem­ber 25, 2020 The Forum of Euro­pean Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tions (FEMYSO) is deeply dis­ap­point­ed by the demo­niz­ing cov­er­age of FEMYSO, which is cur­rent­ly cir­cu­lat­ing in Dutch media. (…) This ongo­ing attack on FEMYSO and its mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions has been ini­ti­at­ed by the far-right spec­trum and cre­ates a false nar­ra­tive about Mus­lims’ efforts in the wider soci­ety. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, these sounds have been unjust­ly adopt­ed by var­i­ous news orga­ni­za­tions, with­out approach­ing FEMYSO to allow room for these untruths to be disputed.

(Trans­lat­ed from Dutch via DeepL)

Read the rest here.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) had dis­cov­ered that Kau­thar Bouchal­likht is also like­ly the daugh­ter of Mostapha Bouchal­likht, one of the most impor­tant lead­ers of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Nether­lands, a transna­tion­al Islamist influ­ence net­work cov­ered by the GIOR. As the GIOR report­ed, the Dutch trade reg­is­ter indi­cates that her Ams­ter­dam address is the same address used to reg­is­ter a Dutch foun­da­tion where Mostapha Bouchal­likht serves as Chairman.

FEMYSO is the youth/student arm of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims, for­mer­ly known as the Fed­er­a­tion of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions in Europe (FIOE), known to rep­re­sent the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe. One of the impor­tant lead­ers of FEMYSO over the years has been Ger­man Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Ibrahim El-Zay­at, and in recent times, its lead­er­ship has been drawn from the fam­i­ly of impor­tant Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood lead­ers. Almost all of the FEMYSO mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions are also tied to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe. Over the years, FEMYSO has devel­oped rela­tion­ships with the Coun­cil of Europe, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, and many oth­er sig­nif­i­cant orga­ni­za­tions at the Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al level.

Recent GIOR report­ing on FEMYSO has included:

• In Novem­ber, the GIOR report­ed that a group of 28 Euro­pean Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing FEMYSO had pub­lished an open let­ter to French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron alleg­ing a “uni­lat­er­al assault on Mus­lims, Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.”

• Also in Novem­ber, the GIOR report­ed that FEMYSO host­ed an anti-Islam­o­pho­bia event with sev­er­al top EU officials.

• In Octo­ber, the GIOR report­ed that FEMYSO’s Pres­i­dent par­tic­i­pat­ed in a vir­tu­al meet­ing attend­ed by many key orga­ni­za­tions of the Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood.

• In Octo­ber, the GIOR report­ed on FEMYSO’s ties to the Col­lec­tive Against Islam­o­pho­bia in France (CCIF), which was iden­ti­fied as an Islamist influ­ence operation.

• In Octo­ber, the GIOR report­ed that FEMYSO was among a group of civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions with links to the Euro­pean Mus­lim Broth­er­hood call­ing for the adop­tion of anti-racist leg­is­la­tion mit­i­gat­ing the impact of Covid-19 on Mus­lim communities.