Global Muslim Brotherhood Scholars Denounce Turkey for Receiving Israeli President, Call Turkey a “Sanctuary”

A promi­nent orga­ni­za­tion of Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood schol­ars has denounced Turkey for receiv­ing Israeli Pres­i­dent Isaac Her­zog while call­ing Turkey a sanc­tu­ary for the orga­ni­za­tion. Accord­ing to a state­ment by the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Mus­lim Schol­ars (IUMS):

March 10, 2022: We, the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Mus­lim Schol­ars, were sur­prised by the offi­cial vis­it of the head of state of the occu­py­ing Zion­ist enti­ty to our sanc­tu­ary and our first des­ti­na­tion, the Turk­ish Repub­lic, and by the offi­cial recep­tion giv­en to him by the Turk­ish pres­i­den­cy. And the union — by virtue of its being rep­re­sent­ing Mus­lim schol­ars and stand­ing with the issues of its nation, fore­most of which is the issue of Pales­tine, and that it stands with truth wher­ev­er it is, and against nor­mal­iza­tion with the occu­piers of our sanc­tu­ary. We con­sid­er this vis­it a reject­ed and con­demned step of nor­mal­iza­tion; because it serves the usurp­ing Zion­ist ene­my, harms the strug­gles of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple and their rights, and is not wor­thy of the mag­na­nim­i­ty of the great Turk­ish peo­ple and their Islam­ic and human­i­tar­i­an oblig­a­tions, espe­cial­ly their hon­or­able posi­tions in sup­port of the Pales­tin­ian cause and oppo­si­tion to the Zion­ist occu­pa­tion and its con­tin­u­ing crimes in Pales­tine and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. [Trans­lat­ed by Google with edits]

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The use of the term “sanc­tu­ary” by the IUMS is inter­est­ing. The IUMS was orig­i­nal­ly reg­is­tered in Ire­land, and its con­tact infor­ma­tion cur­rent­ly lists its HQ phone num­ber in Qatar, where Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) leader Youssef Qaradawi, the IUMS for­mer leader, is based. The IUMS web­site also lists office phone num­bers in Tunisia and Turkey. A 2011 report authored by the GIOR edi­tor con­clud­ed that in 2006, Turkey became a new cen­ter for the GMB. That report also detailed Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ide­o­log­i­cal ties to the GMB, dat­ing back to Erdoğan’s affil­i­a­tion in the 1970s with the World Assem­bly of Mus­lim Youth. Since then, Turkey has become a haven for Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mem­bers flee­ing a crack­down in Egypt.

Found­ed in 2004, the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Mus­lim Schol­ars is an inter­na­tion­al body of Mus­lim the­olo­gians whose lead­er­ship is close­ly tied to the GMB and, until recent­ly, was led by GMB spir­i­tu­al guide Youssef Qaradawi. Sev­er­al promi­nent Euro­pean Mus­lim faith lead­ers tied to the GMB were IUMS mem­bers and/or have served as IUMS Trus­tees, includ­ing for­mer Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Islam­ic Stud­ies pro­fes­sor Tariq Ramadan and Ahmed Jabal­lah, a senior leader in the French and Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood.