Muslim Brotherhood Groups Push Viral #HandsOffMyHijab Campaign

French media is report­ing that a group of Mus­lim activists, includ­ing lead­ers of the Forum of Euro­pean Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tions (FEMYSO), has pushed a viral social media cam­paign protest­ing a pro­pos­al by the French sen­ate to ban minors from wear­ing the hijab in pub­lic spaces. Accord­ing to the Le Parisien arti­cle:

April 18, 2021 Since the Sen­ate has vot­ed in favor of a ban on the wear­ing of the veil for accom­pa­ny­ing moth­ers on school trips, many Mus­lim women liv­ing in France have been try­ing to make their voic­es heard with the hash­tag #Pas­ToucheA­Mon­Hi­jab, often accom­pa­nied by a per­son­al text and a pho­to with their mot­to writ­ten in the palm of their hand. [Trans­lat­ed from French using Google.]

Read the rest here.

The arti­cle reports the hash­tag #Hand­sOffMy­Hi­jab was orig­i­nal­ly launched by Amer­i­can activists con­cerned about the free­doms of their French co-reli­gion­ists and iden­ti­fies one of the French version’s ear­ly back­ers as Hiba Latreche, Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Forum of Euro­pean Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tions (FEMYSO). Latreche recent­ly took to French and Qatari TV to pro­mote the cam­paign, which was report­ed to have gained over 1.9 mil­lion views on the video plat­form Tik­Tok and has seen sup­port by US Con­gress­woman Ilhan Omar and oth­er Mus­lim Broth­er­hood groups such as the Mus­lim Asso­ci­a­tion of Britain. A GIOR inves­ti­ga­tion has estab­lished that Hiba Latreche is like­ly the daugh­ter of French Mus­lim politi­cian Mohammed Ennac­er Latreche, who has a long his­to­ry of mak­ing anti-Semit­ic state­ments and who in 2014 had his assets frozen by the French gov­ern­ment after defend­ing acts of jihadist ter­ror­ism in Syria.

In 2010, France was the first West­ern coun­try to ban reli­gious veil­ing in pub­lic, lead­ing to an intense debate on head­scarves and reli­gious cov­er­ings. The lat­est pro­pos­als by the French sen­ate come as the coun­try attempts to intro­duce a so-called “anti-sep­a­ratism” law aimed at bol­ster­ing the coun­try’s sec­u­lar val­ues. In Octo­ber 2020, the GIOR report­ed that the French Pres­i­dent had held a speech announc­ing a tougher stance on groups accused of rad­i­cal­ism and a new French Char­ter of Repub­li­can Val­ues that for­bids for­eign inter­fer­ence in Mus­lim groups.

FEMYSO is the youth/student arm of the Euro­pean Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a transna­tion­al Islamist influ­ence oper­a­tion cov­ered by the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR). Recent GIOR report­ing on FEMYSO has also included:

• In Octo­ber 2020, the GIOR report­ed that FEMYSO’s Pres­i­dent par­tic­i­pat­ed in a vir­tu­al meet­ing attend­ed by many key orga­ni­za­tions of the Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood.

• In Octo­ber 2020, the GIOR report­ed on FEMYSO’s ties to the banned Col­lec­tive Against Islam­o­pho­bia in France (CCIF), which was iden­ti­fied as an Islamist influ­ence operation.

• In Novem­ber 2020, the GIOR report­ed that FEMYSO host­ed an anti-Islam­o­pho­bia event with sev­er­al top EU officials.

• In Jan­u­ary 2021, the GIOR report­ed that FEMYSO had issued a state­ment prais­ing a deci­sion to allow reli­gious cloth­ing in High­er Edu­ca­tion in Belgium’s Wal­lo­nia-Brus­sels region.