Dutch Parliament Reports on Global Muslim Brotherhood Influence Over Mosques

In June, the Dutch Par­lia­ment pub­lished an inquiry into for­eign influ­ence over the country’s Mus­lims, high­light­ing mil­lions of euros in fund­ing of Dutch mosques by char­i­ties close to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Among the orga­ni­za­tions most promi­nent­ly fea­tured in the report is Qatar Char­i­ty (QC), a qua­si-gov­ern­men­tal NGO fund­ed by the Qatari roy­al fam­i­ly. Accord­ing to a trans­la­tion of the Dutch lan­guage report:

June 25, 2020 Mr. Van der Blom indi­cates that he through a good friend of Cen­trum De Mid­den­weg has con­tact­ed Qatar Char­i­ty in April 2014: “Qatar Char­i­ty is the orga­ni­za­tion that does all the paper­work for any­thing char­i­ty-relat­ed in Qatar. We have cre­at­ed a file there. Then you get a kind of file num­ber, with which you then can go to busi­ness­peo­ple. You can also go to a mosque – you name it”. This has led to some fifty donors who have donat­ed mon­ey to Qatar Char­i­ty, in total €700,000 to €750,000.

Read the rest here.

The report says QC’s dona­tions reached the Nether­lands via the Europe Trust Nether­lands (ETN), the Dutch branch of the Europe Trust (ET). Although some­times claim­ing to be an inde­pen­dent char­i­ty, the Europe Trust is in fact a part of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (CEM), rep­re­sent­ing the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe. The ET has been amass­ing a port­fo­lio of rev­enue-pro­duc­ing prop­er­ties, which it uses chiefly to fund CEM mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions. Accord­ing to the report:

Pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed doc­u­ments show that ETN has been the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of large dona­tions from the Qatar Char­i­ty. In a let­ter dat­ed May 23, 2015, for exam­ple, then ETN direc­tor Yassin al Furqani con­firms to Qatar Char­i­ty that ETN had received sev­en wire trans­fers (six for Euros 99.447,29 and one for Euros 59.638,38—for a total of Euros 656.322,12) on its ABN-AMRO bank account “as per the con­tract signed with Qatar Char­i­ty on 01/05/2014” in order to pur­chase a build­ing in the city of Rot­ter­dam (which became the Cen­trum De Middenweg).

Qatar Char­i­ty has a his­to­ry of fund­ing Islam­ic cen­ters and Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood projects around Europe, most of them in Italy and France. QC was also a mem­ber of the Cairo-based Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic Coun­cil for Da’wa and Relief (IICDR), an umbrel­la group for 86 Islam­ic orga­ni­za­tions, many of which are asso­ci­at­ed with the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Hamas fundrais­ing, or sup­port for Al Qae­da. QC was also part of the Union of Good, the coali­tion of char­i­ties rais­ing mon­ey for Hamas and led by GMB leader Youssef Qaradawi. The Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch (GMBDW) report­ing on QC includ­ed: 

• In June 2017, the GMBDW report­ed that the QC had fund­ed a UK mosque with exten­sive ties to the Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood.

• In March 2016, the GMBDW report­ed that a mosque asso­ci­a­tion tied to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Bel­gium had received more than one mil­lion euros from QC.

• In June 2015, the GMBDW report­ed on the estab­lish­ment of the first Islam­ic cen­ter in Lux­em­bourg financed large­ly by Qatar Charity.

• In August 2014, the GMVBDW report­ed that QC had spon­sored an Istan­bul con­fer­ence at which GMB lead­ers announced the launch of a new orga­ni­za­tion appear­ing to uni­fy Hamas fundrais­ing and flotil­la efforts.

The Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood is a transna­tion­al Islamist net­work cov­ered by the GIOR.