The Movement of the Muslim Brotherhood into the West

Part 10 of a serialization of Shariah – The Threat to America, the report of Team B II of the Center for Security Policy.

Before we look at the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration of the United States, we’ll study its penetration of the Western societies of Europe. Knowing how the extremist “civilization jihad” movement moved covertly into the European democracies provides insights in how it burrowed into America.

The Team B II report on shariah identifies five prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood, known in Arabic as Ikhwan, during the early infiltration of Europe: Said Ramadan, Youssef Nada, Ghaleb Himmat, Mohamed Akef and Yousef al Qaradawi, the latter of whom today is known as the International Muslim Brotherhood’s “spiritual guide” and is considered a leading Islamic legal scholar. Each man played an important role in transforming the Ikhwan into the international Muslim mafia that it is today.

Of the five, Said Ramadan is particularly noteworthy.

Ramadan was Ikhwan founder Hassan al Banna’s assistant for years. He married al Banna’s daughter and became a driving force in the MB leadership after the Egyptian security forces killed al Banna in the 1950s. His son, Tariq Ramadan, is a member of the Ikhwan royalty and one of today’s most assiduous practitioners of stealth or civilization jihad.

The George W. Bush administration banned Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States in 2004. In January, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reversed the ban, allowing the younger Ramadan to use his renewed access to American audiences to advance the Ikhwan’s civilization jihad.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Post-World War II Europe

Postwar West Germany offered the MB a valuable safe haven in the heart of Europe, primarily because the Ikhwan had established a relationship with the Nazis during World War II and maintained ties to powerful Germans after the war. The West Germans were especially welcoming of Syrians and Egyptians because of a state policy that offered assistance to any “refugees” from nations that formally recognized Bonn’s rival, communist East Germany – something both Egypt and Syria did.

The Ikhwan leadership, which insinuate ditself into the societies of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other European countries, established numerous front organizations for the Brotherhood – a pattern the organization follows aggressively around the world and especially in the West to this day.

For example, Said Ramadan moved to Cologne, where he received a law degree, and founded the Islamic Society of Germany. He presided over the organization from 1958-1968.

Spreading across Europe and beyond

In 1962, Ramadan founded the Muslim World League in Saudi Arabia, a global Muslim Brotherhood front that would set up chapters in scores of countries worldwide.

Another of the five individuals, Ghaleb Himmat, was a Syrian who was a citizen of Italy. He directed the Islamic Society of Germany from 1973-2002. He established the Al-Taqwa Bank, which Italian intelligence dubbed “the bank of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Himmat ran Al-Taqwa and a group of front companies in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Bahamas with yet another of the five, Youssef Nada.

Before it was shut down in 2002, Al-Taqwa Bank became known for its funding of: al Qaeda; the Brotherhood’s Palestinian arm, known as Hamas; Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini and his supporters; and other terrorist organizations.

In the 1960’s, these senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders planned and built a huge complex known as the Islamic Center of Munich which became an important staging point for the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe.

A new book by Ian Johnson entitled ” target=”_self”>A Mosque in Munich describes the powerful force-multiplier this facility became for Ikhwan operations in Europe and beyond. It also reveals longstanding U.S. government ties to the Brothers, including Said Ramadan who contributed to the construction of this mosque.

In 1973, several dozen Muslim Brothers attended a meeting of the Islamic Cultural Centres and Bodies in Europe in London, England in order to organize the Muslim Brotherhood Movement in Europe. Ghaleb Himmat was present as the head of the Islamic Community of Southern Germany. While no agreement on strategy to develop a European Islamic network was reached, this meeting laid the foundation for such a plan.

Four years later, the senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders met in Lugano, Switzerland, near the homes of Ghaleb Himmat and Youssef Nada to discuss the strategy for moving the Brotherhood forward.

Yousef al-Qaradawi, another of the five, was among those present at this meeting. One of the first actions taken afterwards was the establishment of the MB front known as the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT). IIIT’s role was to maintain the ideological purity and consistency of the Brotherhood’s expanding operations.

During a subsequent meeting in Saudi Arabia in 1978, the Brotherhood decided to set up IIIT near Temple University in Philadelphia, an institution where leading Islamic thinker and Muslim Brother Ismail Faruqi was teaching at the time. Later, the IIIT moved its headquarters to Herndon, Virginia.

The next part of this BigPeace series, Part 11, continues with the Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration of Western democratic societies.