We are reprinting here an article published on November 27 on the site Arab News https://www.arabnews.fr/node/171416/international
LONDON: The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates are using well-meaning liberals across Europe to cover up and advance their own anti-democratic agenda, experts have warned.
At an event attended by Arab News and which was organised by the UAE think tank Trends Research and Advisory, experts also warned that despite its relative decline over the past decade, the Muslim Brotherhood is adapting and must be continually countered.
Dr. Lorenzo Vidino, director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told participants that Muslim Brotherhood uses 'woke' language to 'hide its true nature' as it gains ground in Europe.
"We are seeing a very widespread loss of popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood among the populations of the Arab world," he stressed.
"People experienced the ineffectiveness of the Muslim Brotherhood's rule in 2012 and 2013. People became disenchanted with the group."
But in the West, and particularly in Europe, the group's status is "a more complex question," he added.
In the West, it is a "different group of Muslim Brotherhood, with different goals and priorities than in Muslim countries," Vidino explained.
We are witnessing the "coming of age of a second generation of activists born in Europe and extremely well informed about European and Western political discourse," he added.
"With this, they are able to do what the first generation of pioneers aspired to do but were not really able to do."
The goal, he said, is to gain acceptance by mainstream establishments, and they use their native understanding of Western political discourse to achieve this.
"They don't look like the Muslim Brotherhood," Vidino said. "They got their political start in the group's circles, but from their language to the political alliances they maintain, they don't exactly follow the same way of operating that is typical of the Muslim Brotherhood." They opted for "the language of post-colonial theory, a very progressive politics", he clarified.
"People started calling them 'woke Islamists', using a lot of the concepts of racism, intolerance, which are common in political discourse in Europe and camouflaging their true nature in a language that makes them much more acceptable, more pleasant, for ordinary integration."
For example, "We see these activists working closely with LGBTQ organizations, with very progressive movements, with which they actually have very little in common if you dig a little deeper.", Vidino said.
He added: "These are tactical alliances with these groups, thanks to their ability to understand the political discourse that vibrates the European social order."
Dr. Nasr Mohammed Aref, a professor of political science at Cairo University, revealed that this adaptability is partly what preserves the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The group "has a very great capacity to adapt to its environment," he added. “It changes “color” depending on its environment to attract members.”
According to Aref, The prosperity of the group in a given country depends on decisions taken at the state level.
"The presence of the Muslim Brotherhood is a national decision, a state decision," he reiterated. "The existence of the Muslim Brotherhood, or its non-existence, is the decision of the state in which it is present. It is up to the countries to decide whether this group can exist or not.".
Dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood, and more broadly with political Islam, "is the question of the moment," said Dr. Ziad Munson, a professor of sociology at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
But "if it were easy, it would already be done, because the way to do it is to think about how, for the vast majority of people, ideology is something that is implemented in practice and in their daily lives," he stressed.
"So the key is to break that link between the toxic forms of ideology that exist and the practical everyday activities that people are engaged in."
For Muslims, this means that the freedom to pray, eat halal food and freely express their religion is preserved and completely separate from engagement in the pursuit of so-called pan-Islamist political goals, Munson argued, adding that this problem is not unique to the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslims in general.
"Western governments are facing this problem across the political spectrum with the rise of populism broadly defined, often linked to religious radicalism, but not necessarily related to it," he concluded.
