European Muslim Brotherhood Women’s Group Emphasizes Contributions to Council of Europe Policy Recommendations on Anti-Muslim Racism

The Euro­pean Forum of Mus­lim Women (EFOMW) has pub­lished a state­ment say­ing it was grate­ful to have con­tributed to an exten­sive set of pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions on com­bat­ting anti-Mus­lim racism adopt­ed by the Coun­cil of Europe’s main anti-racism body in Decem­ber 2021. Accord­ing to a post on the EFOMW website:

March 2, 2022 Since 2020 EFOMW has par­tic­i­pat­ed in con­sul­ta­tion meet­ings with Euro­pean Com­mis­sion against Racism and Intol­er­ance (ECRI) regard­ing intol­er­ance and dis­crim­i­na­tion against Mus­lims, and more specif­i­cal­ly in revi­sion of its Gen­er­al Pol­i­cy Rec­om­men­da­tion (GPR) No.5. Con­sul­ta­tion meet­ings were organ­ised with aim to get feed­back from lead­ing civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions work­ing in this field, on the expe­ri­ences of the Mus­lim (real or per­ceived) community.

Read the rest here.

On 1 March 2022, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion against Racism and Intol­er­ance, the Coun­cil of Europe’s main anti-racism body, pub­lished its revised Gen­er­al Pol­i­cy Rec­om­men­da­tion (GPR) No. V. This new doc­u­ment con­tains a total of 60 propo­si­tions, includ­ing ensur­ing the inclu­sion of the prin­ci­ple of inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty in all future equal­i­ty poli­cies, demand­ing pub­lic insti­tu­tions make pro­vi­sions for the accom­mo­da­tion of reli­gious require­ments and remov­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry legal obsta­cles regard­ing the con­struc­tion of Mus­lim places of wor­ship. GPRs are designed to pro­vide detailed guide­lines that pol­i­cy­mak­ers are invit­ed to use when draw­ing up nation­al strate­gies and poli­cies in var­i­ous fields. They are specif­i­cal­ly addressed to the nation­al author­i­ties of 47 Coun­cil of Europe mem­ber states but are also intend­ed to be act­ed upon by Euro­pean soci­eties in general.

The EFOMW is affil­i­at­ed with the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (CEM), the umbrel­la group rep­re­sent­ing the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) in Europe. While the EFOMW his­to­ry pro­vid­ed on its web­site fails to men­tion this back­ground, the group’s mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions and cur­rent lead­er­ship con­tin­ue to show many links to CEM and the GMB. Sev­er­al of EFOMW’s cur­rent and for­mer offi­cers are the wives or rel­a­tives of lead­ing CEM offi­cers, such as for­mer EFOMW Pres­i­dent Noura Jabal­lah (wife of Ahmed Jabal­lah), Nadia Kar­mous (wife of Mohamed Kar­mous) or Hiba Tara­ji (sis­ter of Houai­da Tara­ji). The EFOMW has a his­to­ry of close coop­er­a­tion with the Coun­cil of Europe, doc­u­ment­ed by the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR), includ­ing an August 2021 report cov­er­ing a con­tro­ver­sial work­shop where pro-hijab cam­paign­ing mate­ri­als were produced.