French Governmental Anti-Radicalization Committee Calls Out Islamist Leadership of British NGO With Muslim Brotherhood Ties

On 27 April 2022, SG-CIPDR, a French gov­ern­men­tal anti-rad­i­cal­iza­tion com­mit­tee, post­ed a Twit­ter thread call­ing out the Islamist lead­er­ship and activ­i­ties of CAGE, a British NGO with Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ties. Accord­ing to one tweet by the SG-CIPDR:

Far from the empow­er­ment and the objec­tive of jus­tice that it claims, CAGE brings togeth­er a real Islamist ecosys­tem. Found­ed in 2003, the struc­ture is led by a for­mer jihadist from the Afghan camps, Moaz­zam Begg. [Google trans­lat­ed from French.]

Read the thread here.

The SG-CIPDR also said CAGE had pub­lished remarks attack­ing French school teacher Samuel Paty and defend­ed the actions that led to his death. In Octo­ber 2020, Paty was behead­ed by an immi­grant teenag­er said to be enraged over car­toons of the Prophet Muham­mad shown in his class on free speech. After the attack, France ordered a crack­down on groups accused of rad­i­cal­ism, car­ry­ing out dozens of raids and tem­porar­i­ly shut­ting down mosques.

CAGE was found­ed in 2003 by British-Pak­istani activist Moaz­zam Begg as an advo­ca­cy body and plat­form for Mus­lims affect­ed by the US War on Ter­ror. It has a his­to­ry of cam­paign­ing against glob­al anti-ter­ror­ism efforts and mea­sures against Islamist rad­i­cal­iza­tion, claim­ing these mea­sures unfair­ly tar­get­ed Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties and under­mined the rule of law. CAGE lead­ers are known to have ties to the British Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work. Accord­ing to British media, dur­ing a 2006 protest, CAGE Research Direc­tor Asim Qureshi advo­cat­ed sup­port­ing vio­lent Jihad over­seas in con­flict zones involv­ing Mus­lims, saying:

When we see the exam­ple of our broth­ers and sis­ters fight­ing in Chech­nya, Iraq, Pales­tine, Kash­mir, Afghanistan, then we know where the exam­ple lies. When we see Hezbol­lah defeat­ing the armies of Israel, we know where the solu­tion is and where the vic­to­ry lies. We know that it is incum­bent upon all of us, to sup­port the jihad of our broth­ers and sis­ters in these coun­tries when they are fac­ing the oppres­sion of the West.

In 2015, he gained noto­ri­ety for describ­ing the IS exe­cu­tion­er Mohammed Emwazi as a “beau­ti­ful young man.” A Sep­tem­ber 2021 vir­tu­al pan­el dis­cus­sion host­ed by CAGE Out­reach Direc­tor Moaz­zam Begg fea­tured Mul­lah Abdus-Salam Zaeef, the for­mer Tal­iban ambas­sador to Pakistan.

In April 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed CAGE had pub­lished a report alleg­ing sys­tem­at­ic state-spon­sored per­se­cu­tion of Mus­lims in France, demand­ing the French gov­ern­ment reverse its dis­so­lu­tion of Islamist orga­ni­za­tions and remove the exec­u­tive pow­er to dis­solve such orga­ni­za­tions altogether.