German Government Dialogue Partner Expels Muslim Brotherhood Member Group

Ger­man media is report­ing that the Cen­tral Coun­cil of Mus­lims in Ger­many, the main Mus­lim dia­logue part­ner for Ger­man author­i­ties, has expelled one of its mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions, con­sid­ered to rep­re­sent the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the coun­try. Accord­ing to a Deutsche Welle report:

Feb­ru­ary 4, 2022 It’s a dry lit­tle mes­sage. But it is about an impor­tant step: The Cen­tral Coun­cil of Mus­lims in Ger­many (ZMD) sep­a­rates from the Ger­man Mus­lim Com­mu­ni­ty (DMG). The Cen­tral Coun­cil, which was formed in 1993 and is one of the largest Islam­ic umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tions in the coun­try, has thus exclud­ed one of its found­ing mem­bers.  In the brief noti­fi­ca­tion of the deci­sion, the Cen­tral Coun­cil does not give any rea­son for the cut that has been made. It is only men­tioned that the ZMD rep­re­sen­ta­tive assem­bly passed the vote with the required two-thirds major­i­ty. This leaves room for spec­u­la­tion. It may be that the Ger­man Mus­lim Com­mu­ni­ty (DMG) refused clar­i­fi­ca­tions in the umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion. But what is more impor­tant is that it has long been asso­ci­at­ed with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and has been mon­i­tored by the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion. [Trans­lat­ed with Google Translate]

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The Cen­tral Coun­cil of Mus­lims in Ger­many (Zen­tral­rat der Mus­lime in Deutschland))(ZMD) is an Islam­ic umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion with sev­er­al mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions mon­i­tored by the Ger­man domes­tic intel­li­gence agency. Although the Ger­man Fed­er­al Agency for Civic Edu­ca­tion esti­mates that the ZMD rep­re­sents less than one per­cent of all Ger­man Mus­lims direct­ly, it is regard­ed as the government’s main dia­logue part­ner for soci­etal issues about Islam and the local Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. One of ZMD’s found­ing mem­bers until its 2019 sus­pen­sion was the Deutsche Mus­lim­is­che Gemein­schaft (DMG), rep­re­sent­ing the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Ger­many. In Sep­tem­ber, we report­ed about the lat­est annu­al report by Germany’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency which described the DMG as follows:

In Ger­many, the DMG, for­mer­ly the Islam­ic Com­mu­ni­ty in Ger­many e. V. (IGD), with its head­quar­ters in Berlin, is the orga­ni­za­tion of MB sup­port­ers with the largest num­ber of mem­bers in Ger­many. The DMG rep­re­sents the Egypt­ian branch of the MB and has been a mem­ber of the Fed­er­a­tion of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions in Europe (FIOE), now the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (CEM), since its foun­da­tion as IGD.

In April, we report­ed that Germany’s then-rul­ing con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion that said any form of coop­er­a­tion should be dis­con­tin­ued between the Ger­man gov­ern­ment and Islamist groups mon­i­tored by Germany’s intel­li­gence services.