European Muslim Brotherhood Youth Group Sought Millions from Qatar Charity to Fund Brussels Office

French media is report­ing that in 2016, the Forum of Euro­pean Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tions (FEMYSO) asked Qatar Char­i­ty for mil­lions of euros to fund its Brus­sels head­quar­ters. Accord­ing to the Le Point arti­cle:

Octo­ber 4, 2022 Le Point was also able to con­sult emails exchanged in 2016 between Femyso and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Qatar Char­i­ty orga­ni­za­tion. The rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Qatar Char­i­ty are […] approached by FEMYSO to obtain the 2.25 mil­lion euros miss­ing from the project […]. [Trans­lat­ed from French orig­i­nal using Google.]

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Accord­ing to the arti­cle, FEMYSO said that 6.75 mil­lion of the project total­ing 9 mil­lion euros, had already been pro­vid­ed by the Islam­ic Devel­op­ment Bank, a Sau­di bank­ing insti­tu­tion that has fund­ed sev­er­al projects of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB). Accord­ing to Le Point, FEMYSO also pro­posed set­ting up an Islam­ic trust (waqf) to facil­i­tate con­tin­u­ous rent pay­ments. Ques­tioned by Le Point, FEMYSO said that it had nev­er received fund­ing from Qatar Char­i­ty or its subsidiaries.

Although Qatar Char­i­ty is osten­si­bly an inde­pen­dent char­i­ty, a 2020 book authored by two French jour­nal­ists refers to it as the “reli­gious soft pow­er of Doha.” In 2015, Qatari media report­ed that the char­i­ty had launched an ini­tia­tive to “serve Islam­ic projects world­wide” and that the project oper­at­ed in more than 50 coun­tries with the found­ing of Islam­ic cen­ters in coun­tries such as France, Ger­many, Aus­tralia, Ukraine, Bosnia, Alba­nia, and Italy.

Le Point fur­ther reports that in their exchanges with the char­i­ty, FEMYSO offi­cers empha­sized that their orga­ni­za­tion sought to pro­tect the Islam­ic iden­ti­ty of young Euro­pean Mus­lims. This con­trasts with claims made by FEMYSO to the Euro­pean pub­lic that it chiefly seeks to pro­tect human rights and pro­mote tol­er­ance and cohe­sion among Euro­pean societies.

A July 2022 Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report on Euro­pean gov­ern­ment fund­ing of the GMB detailed how sev­er­al Euro­pean Com­mis­sion depart­ments grant­ed FEMYSO more than €288,000 over ten years for var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty projects. In Sep­tem­ber 2022, the GIOR report­ed that the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion had said there cur­rent­ly was no fur­ther fund­ing for FEMYSO while acknowl­edg­ing past funding.

FEMYSO is also heav­i­ly fea­tured in an August 2022 GIOR report titled “Europe and the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Part 2: Lob­by­ing & Polit­i­cal Impacts,” which ana­lyzes GMB lob­by­ing efforts at the exec­u­tive and leg­isla­tive bod­ies of the Euro­pean Union.