Swedish Academics Criticize Public Funding For Muslim Brotherhood-Linked Youth Group

Swedish media is report­ing that promi­nent Swedish aca­d­e­mics have pub­lished an open let­ter crit­i­ciz­ing the pub­lic fund­ing for a Mus­lim youth group linked to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Swe­den. In the let­ter, three aca­d­e­mics from the Swedish Nation­al Defense Col­lege and Malmö Uni­ver­si­ty accuse the Swedish Mus­lim stu­dent group Ibn Rushd of giv­ing a plat­form to anti­se­mit­ic speak­ers and coop­er­at­ing with misog­y­nists and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic Islamists. They fur­ther crit­i­cize the Swedish state agency Folk­bild­ningsrådet for allo­cat­ing mil­lions of pub­lic funds to Ibn Rushd. Accord­ing to the let­ter:

Despite con­tin­ued scan­dals sur­round­ing the Folk­bild­ningsrådet and Ibn Rushd, our reviews show that there are major short­com­ings in the Folk­bild­ningsråde­t’s abil­i­ty to live up to the require­ments set by the gov­ern­ment for state sub­si­dies for pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion. The ques­tion is whether the Folk­bild­ningsråde­t’s board will take dif­fi­cult but nec­es­sary mea­sures or whether it choos­es to look the oth­er way and just let mil­lions con­tin­ue to flow into the pock­ets of orga­nized cheat­ing and crime as well as Islamist and unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic activ­i­ties? [Google Translated]

Ibn Rush, in turn, replied to the let­ter and denounced the accu­sa­tions against the group and its part­ners as “large­ly devoid of sub­stance.” It assert­ed that Ibn Rushd does not have any links to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and called the accu­sa­tion a “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry.” In a counter reply, the three aca­d­e­mics dis­missed Ibn Rushd’s argu­ments stat­ing:

If they renounce all ide­o­log­i­cal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with MB, they need to explain why they remain in MB’s orga­ni­za­tion­al net­work. We under­stand that this is dif­fi­cult, as Ibn Rushd’s statutes stip­u­late that upon dis­so­lu­tion, all assets must be trans­ferred to the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Swe­den (IFiS). IFiS, in turn, trans­fers its assets upon dis­so­lu­tion to MB’s umbrel­la body Fed­er­a­tion of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions in Europe (FIOE). Case closed. [Google Translated]

The Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Swe­den is the Swedish mem­ber orga­ni­za­tion of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (CEM), pre­vi­ous­ly known as the Fed­er­a­tion of Islam­ic Orga­ni­za­tions in Europe (FIOE). The CEM, in turn,  claims to be an inde­pen­dent umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing the inter­ests of Mus­lims in Europe but, in real­i­ty, is an umbrel­la group com­pris­ing the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe. The CEM and its mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions have gained a degree of polit­i­cal legit­i­ma­cy and are viewed by some as inter­locu­tors for the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties in Europe.