European Muslim Brotherhood Women’s Group Takes Part in European Parliament Civil Society Meeting

The Euro­pean Forum of Mus­lim Women (EFOMW) is report­ing that on 31 May 2022, it took part in a vir­tu­al “shad­ow meet­ing of civ­il soci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives” at the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, propos­ing amend­ments to a draft Par­lia­ment report on racial jus­tice and non-dis­crim­i­na­tion. Accord­ing to an EFOMW post:

At the meet­ing civ­il soci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives had oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­ment on and pro­pose amend­ments for a Report on racial jus­tice, non-dis­crim­i­na­tion and anti-racism in the EU, where EFOMW’s oper­a­tions man­ag­er dr. San­ja Bil­ic in coop­er­a­tion with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from ENAR and ERGO net­work made intro­duc­to­ry remarks which were fol­lowed by exchange of views between MEPs and civ­il soci­ety organisations.

Read the rest here.

The report, pub­lished by the Euro­pean Parliament’s Com­mit­tee on Civ­il Lib­er­ties, Jus­tice, and Home Affairs in ear­ly May 2022, empha­sized the need for the Union to “devel­op a robust and com­pre­hen­sive agen­da” for effec­tive­ly com­bat­ing racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion in all areas of the EU.

The 31 May event was co-orga­nized by Swedish MEP Evin Incir, Rap­por­teur for the Report on Racial jus­tice, non-dis­crim­i­na­tion, and anti-racism in the EU, and the Com­mit­tee on Civ­il Lib­er­ties, Jus­tice and Home Affairs. The EFOMW says that, as part of the meet­ing, EFOMW oper­a­tions man­ag­er San­ja Bil­ic called for review­ing and updat­ing the Euro­pean leg­isla­tive frame­work to tack­le inter­sec­tion­al and struc­tur­al dis­crim­i­na­tion and main­stream­ing racial equal­i­ty in all areas of pol­i­cy-mak­ing. Accord­ing to EFOMW, civ­il soci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives also stressed the impor­tance of equal­i­ty data col­lec­tion and how civ­il soci­ety par­tic­i­pa­tion was cru­cial for the suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of EU directives.

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. In March 2022, the GIOR report­ed that the EFOMW had 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.

For more on the EFOMW, go here.