Swedish Muslim Brotherhood Groups Receive Prestigious Award- US Says One Group’s Leadership “Horrifyingly Anti-Semitic”

A Swedish inter-faith ini­tia­tive that includes a char­i­ty and a mosque linked to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood was award­ed the pres­ti­gious 2020 Mar­tin Luther King Award for its work with refugees. Accord­ing to an Islam­ic Relief World­wide IRW) press release:

Decem­ber 10, 2020 An inter-faith ini­tia­tive between Islam­ic Relief Swe­den, the Church of Swe­den and the Stock­holm mosque has been announced as the recip­i­ent of this year’s pres­ti­gious Mar­tin Luther King Award in Sweden.The Goda Grannar con­sor­tium – the Swedish term for Good Neigh­bours – was praised by the award’s jury for bring­ing faiths togeth­er and “inspir­ing us all to move from words to deeds and pro­mote demo­c­ra­t­ic coex­is­tence.” The con­sor­tium was formed in 2015 after a large influx of refugees arrived in Stock­holm from war-affect­ed coun­tries such as Syr­ia. Work­ing with com­mu­ni­ty vol­un­teers, the con­sor­tium ini­tial­ly pro­vid­ed near­ly 4,000 new arrivals with shel­ter in church­es and the mosque. It has since expand­ed and now pro­vides a wider range of ser­vices for refugees includ­ing “lan­guage cafés”, guid­ance on Swedish soci­ety and legal advice.

Read the rest here.

The Mar­tin Luther King Award is award­ed by the Equme­nia Church, The Swedish Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion (Swe­FOR), and the Chris­t­ian Coun­cil of Swe­den. It is award­ed in the spir­it of Mar­tin Luther King to cel­e­brate his lega­cy of hope and reconciliation.

Only three weeks lat­er, a US. State Depart­ment press release referred to the “bla­tant and hor­ri­fy­ing anti-Semi­tism and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of vio­lence exhib­it­ed at the most senior lev­els of IRW” and called on all gov­ern­ment bod­ies to reex­am­ine their rela­tion­ship with IRW:

Decem­ber 30, 2020 The Office of the Spe­cial Envoy to Mon­i­tor and Com­bat Anti-Semi­tism con­demns the well-doc­u­ment­ed record of anti-Semit­ic atti­tudes and remarks made by the senior lead­er­ship of Islam­ic Relief World­wide (IRW). Giv­en that IRW has an annu­al bud­get of approx­i­mate­ly $100M+ and holds a des­ig­na­tion as a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion inter­na­tion­al­ly, as well as 501 © (3) sta­tus in the Unit­ed States, this record of anti-Semi­tism presents a sig­nif­i­cant issue for all donors and donor coun­tries to IRW. The con­sis­tent pat­tern of spread­ing the most vile anti-Semit­ic vit­ri­ol by IRW’s lead­er­ship caus­es us to ques­tion the core val­ues of the organization. […]

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Islam­ic Relief Swe­den is the Swedish branch of Islam­ic Relief World­wide, a UK-based inter­na­tion­al char­i­ty orga­ni­za­tion whose senior man­age­ment has includ­ed many lead­ers of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Estab­lished in 1984, IRW co-founders includ­ed Essam El-Had­dad, a senior Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mem­ber who lat­er became an advis­er to Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Mohammed Mor­si, and Hany El-Ban­na who lat­er found­ed the Mus­lim Char­i­ties Forum (MCF), which was stripped of UK pub­lic fund­ing over its ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Hamas. A for­mer long-time IRW trustee is Ibrahim El-Zay­at, a leader in both the Euro­pean and the Ger­man Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. El-Zay­at was also a trustee of the Ger­man branch of Islam­ic Relief.  Anoth­er for­mer IRW direc­tor is Ahmed Al-Rawi, the for­mer head of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (for­mer­ly FIOE) and for­mer Pres­i­dent of the  Mus­lim Asso­ci­a­tion of Britain . The cur­rent IRW chair of trustees is Lamia El-Amri, a for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Forum of Mus­lim Women, part of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Muslims.

The Stock­holm mosque is Sweden’s largest mosque and run by the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion in Swe­den (Islamiska För­bun­det i Sverige, IFiS), the Swedish found­ing mem­ber of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims (CEMS), which com­pris­es the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Europe. A Swedish gov­ern­ment report has iden­ti­fied the IFiS as part of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work in the country.