Al-Sharq Forum

The Al-Sharq Forum describes itself as “an inde­pen­dent, inter­na­tion­al non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that aims to con­sol­i­date the val­ues of plu­ral­ism and jus­tice” and serv­ing the peo­ple of the Al Sharq region and the world. It lists address­es in Gene­va, Lon­don, Istan­bul, and Kuala Lumpur. A Turk­ish polit­i­cal sci­en­tist has claimed that fund­ing for the Al-Sharq Forum is under­stood to come from Qatar, part­ly from the Qatar Foun­da­tion (QF), chaired by the moth­er of the cur­rent Qatari emir. The Forum is cur­rent­ly head­ed by Wadah Khan­far, for­mer Direc­tor-Gen­er­al of Al Jazeera Media Net­work, and pos­si­bly with a back­ground in Hamas. Part­ners and sup­port­ers of the Al-Sharq Forum include var­i­ous Euro­pean think tanks and UN insti­tu­tions, as well as the Islam­ic Uni­ver­si­ty of Malaysia (IIUM), per­haps the most impor­tant uni­ver­si­ty for the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In Feb­ru­ary 2021, the Al-Sharq Forum and the Col­lege of Islam­ic Stud­ies (CIS) at the Hamad Bin Khal­i­fa Uni­ver­si­ty signed a two-year mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing, mak­ing the CIS a strate­gic part­ner. The CIS has mul­ti­ple ties to the GMB.