UK Muslim Brotherhood Groups Protest Dismissal of Student Union President over Anti-Semitic Tweets

Sev­er­al Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) groups in the UK have come out in sup­port of Nation­al Union of Stu­dents (NUS) Pres­i­dent-elect Shaima Dal­lali, who, on 1 Novem­ber 2022, was dis­missed by the union over alle­ga­tions of pub­lish­ing anti-Semit­ic social media posts. Accord­ing to a Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain (MCB) state­ment :

The announce­ment of Shaima Dal­lali being dis­missed as pres­i­dent of the NUS is deeply trou­bling and rais­es ques­tions on prop­er due process.

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Dal­lali was also sup­port­ed by the Fed­er­a­tion of Stu­dent Islam­ic Soci­eties (FOSIS), a nation­al umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing Islam­ic soci­eties at uni­ver­si­ties through­out the UK. In Sep­tem­ber 2022, FOSIS had promised to  launch “dis­af­fil­i­a­tion cam­paigns” against the NUS, say­ing it was “no longer fit for pur­pose.“ FOSIS, where Dal­lali for­mer­ly held lead­er­ship posi­tions, accused the NUS of fail­ing to address “insti­tu­tion­al Islam­o­pho­bia” and being neg­li­gent in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with FOSIS.

In March 2022, Dal­lali was elect­ed as NUS Nation­al Pres­i­dent for a two-year term and would have been due to take office in July but was stood down after an inves­ti­ga­tion was launched into alle­ga­tions of anti-Semit­ic posts on social media. Among oth­ers, she was accused of label­ing a Jor­dan­ian cler­ic crit­i­cal of Hamas a “dirty Zion­ist” and pen­ning an arti­cle that called Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) spir­i­tu­al leader Youssef Qaradawi the “moral com­pass for the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty at large.”The affair prompt­ed the British gov­ern­ment to cut ties with and stop fund­ing the NUS, remov­ing it from all Depart­ment for Edu­ca­tion stu­dent groups and replac­ing it with alter­na­tive stu­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Ulti­mate­ly, on 1 Novem­ber 2022, the NUS pub­lished a state­ment that an inde­pen­dent pan­el had found “sig­nif­i­cant breach­es of NUS’ poli­cies” and had ter­mi­nat­ed Dallali’s con­tract. Dal­lali her­self crit­i­cized her dis­missal, call­ing it “unac­cept­able” and say­ing she was con­sid­er­ing “all avail­able legal remedies.”

An April 2022 inves­ti­ga­tion by the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) found that Dal­lali has had addi­tion­al prob­lem­at­ic ties. This includ­ed serv­ing as Project Man­ag­er for the pro-Pales­tin­ian advo­ca­cy group Europal Forum (aka Euro­pean Pales­tin­ian Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Forum), whose lead­ers have his­tor­i­cal­ly been close to the GMB and the Euro­pean Hamas sup­port infra­struc­ture. In Novem­ber 2022, the GIOR report­ed Dal­lali had accept­ed an award from a British Hamas sup­port group.