The Muslim Brotherhood (20 page)

Unsurprisingly, the issue of the connections between the Ikhwan and the UOIF is a highly controversial one that tends to irritate the UOIF immensely. It seems to see its connection to the Brotherhood as some sort of unshakeable albatross. The UOIF leadership has repeatedly denied any formal association with the Ikhwan. Sheikh Ahmed Jaballah has categorically stated, ‘We have no formal relationship to the Ikhwan in Egypt.’
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Fouad Alaoui says: ‘We don’t have any organic link with this organisation [MB] … It is a movement among others. We respect it in the sense that it advocates a renewal and a modernist reading of Islam.’
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He also stated: ‘The UOIF has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood.’
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The UOIF has taken the line that it falls broadly within the same reformist school as the Ikhwan and relies upon texts of key Ikhwani figures as Islamic references but it has no institutional linkage to the movement.

This is not to say that the UOIF does not acknowledge its earlier links to the Brotherhood or the fact that it sought to model itself on the Egyptian branch. Breeze explained that at the time when the UOIF was set up: ‘We were students and we looked to Egypt at that time including
for our understanding of how to apply the Ikhwan project in Europe and how to apply concepts.’
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French Islamic scholar Tareq Oubrou also explained that at that time ‘the books of Mohamed Ghazali, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and Sayyid Qutb were circulating on university campuses … The reading that for us most reconciled modernity and tradition was that of the Muslim Brothers.’
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Mohsen N’Gazou, meanwhile, has stated, ‘We are ideologically Muslim Brothers.’
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Following the same ideological path as the Ikhwan does not of course equate to being formally linked to the Brotherhood. However, the informal ties are apparent and many figures who have played a key role within the UOIF have been closely connected to or members of the Ikhwan. This includes not only Faisal al-Mawlawi, but also Rashid al-Ghannouchi and Mahfoud Nahnah. According to Moulay Abderrahmane Ghoul, the President of the
Conseil Régional du Culte Musulman
in Marseille, ‘Mahfoud Nahnah was very influential. He used to have a major influence and the UOIF had to consult with him.’
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This was reiterated by the former Mufti of Marseille, Soheib Bensheikh, who observed: ‘The UOIF has a connection with the Algerian Hamas. Sheikh Nahnah used to support the UOIF financially on very low levels.’
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Nahnah was also a member of the orientation council of Château-Chinon. According to Ghoul, Sheikh Abu Jarrah Sultani, Nahnah’s successor, also has close links to the UOIF: ‘When they decide on who is in their councils, Sultani has the final say in the union and they have to consult with him.’ Given that Ghoul is generally considered to be a representative of the Algerian state, this may be exaggerated. However, there are clearly very close links between the Algerian Ikhwani leaders and the UOIF. In addition, Ahmed Nachatt, one of the early leaders of the Union, was married to the daughter of Mustafa Mashour. Yusuf al-Qaradawi has also been closely linked to the UOIF. Although al-Qaradawi is not part of the Brotherhood, he is generally considered to be the most influential proponent of the Ikhwani way of thinking. All of these figures have
been in regular attendance at the UOIF’s annual Le Bourget gathering over many years.

As such, the UOIF is totally rooted in the Ikhwan tradition. However, figures such as Breeze have asserted that whilst the UOIF looked to the Brotherhood for inspiration in the early days, it soon came to realise that it needed a different kind of approach in order to survive in the French context. Breeze pinpoints this new understanding to the time when it renamed the UOIF, explaining, ‘The Brotherhood and the community started looking at things differently. We realised that we couldn’t just bring ideas and thoughts to Europe.’
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He also stated that whilst the UOIF agreed with the Ikhwan’s general approach, it disagreed with some of the Brotherhood’s basic goals and objectives. ‘We are not thinking of setting up an Islamic society, we are not thinking of an Islamic government … We think as individuals, not as a collective. We cannot be an alternative to the state.’
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As Breeze also described, ‘The doctrine of the Muslim Brothers is certainly valuable in the field of Islam.’

He went on to explain that they didn’t want to ‘reproduce their objectives or their methods here without reflecting a different reality’.
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Sheikh Ahmed Jaballah also supported this stance, noting, ‘We don’t want to be under the influence of Arab countries.’
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However, he is famously alleged to have declared, ‘The Qur’an is our constitution’ during the UOIF’s annual Le Bourget meeting of 2002.
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As such the UOIF represents perhaps the first evolution of the Ikhwan into an organisation that could sit relatively comfortably within Western society. However, the organisation faces the same problem as all Islamist organisations operating in the West, namely how to deal with being a minority community in a secular state. The UOIF is fully aware, for example, that it cannot maintain the same platform as its Middle Eastern counterparts if it is to play a political role in European countries. For this reason, the UOIF insisted that its members could not also be members of other political organisations
at the same time. The UOIF reportedly told Tunisians from An-Nahda (formerly MTI), that they had to choose ‘whether to focus on Tunisian politics or whether to move on’.
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Likewise, the UOIF is alleged to have made it clear that if al-Mawlawi was to be their leader, he would need to cut his relations with the Ikhwan.
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However, others within the Islamic community in France remained less convinced by this separation. Former UOIF member Dhaou Meskine declared to the French media, ‘The UOIF is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Why are those in charge ashamed of saying so?’
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He has also argued that in its quest for respectability the UOIF has masked its true identity. Similarly Sheikh Abdelhadi, a prominent Salafist imam at the Sunna mosque in Marseille, has roundly condemned the UOIF, stating, ‘They are hypocrites. In front of the government they pretend they are not brothers but in the mosques they call upon the Ikhwan in their methods.’
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He also asserts that they ‘use these methods to gain power’.
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Abdelhadi categorically states, ‘Jaballah is a Muslim Brother. He goes to Saudi Arabia to get money.’
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Clearly this is the view of someone who considers the Ikhwan as competition, yet there is much suspicion about the UOIF’s links to the Brotherhood within the Islamist community at large. One former UOIF member also complained that having publicly linked the UOIF and the Brotherhood he paid a heavy price, suffering attacks in the media and having his financial flows cut.
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In some cases, the UOIF’s policies have seemingly been very much influenced by Cairo. One former senior French Interior Ministry official recounted how the UOIF sought at one point to withdraw from the
Conseil Français du Culte Musulman
(CFCM), a consultation body set up in 2003 and tasked with defending the dignity and interests of the Muslim faith in France.
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Alarmed at the UOIF’s threat to pull out of the consultation process, the frustrated official allegedly complained to the then Murshid Maimoun al-Hodeibi. Al-Hodeibi reportedly told the official that the UOIF
was free to do what it pleased, but mentioned that he would speak to Breeze. Shortly afterwards, the UOIF announced that it would be staying in the consultation process after all. This anecdote is clearly not sufficient basis upon which to claim that the UOIF is steered in some way by the Ikhwan in Cairo. However, it does reveal the importance of personal contacts and informal hierarchy in its relationship to the Brotherhood. Fouad Alaoui has admitted that he met regularly with the late Dr Hassan al-Huwaidi, the Deputy to the Murshid. Another UOIF member has also admitted, ‘Once or twice a year we have meetings with the international
tanzeem
– with Islamists from Turkey, Pakistan, with Sufists in West Africa.’
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In spite of its initial threat to withdraw, the UOIF’s membership of the CFCM became an important opportunity for it to make contacts with the French state and to act as stakeholders and representatives of the Muslim community in France. Yet this reconciliatory stance had the drawback of alienating the UOIF somewhat from its own constituencies. It was heavily criticised by other Islamic groups for selling out and forgetting the interests of Muslims. Perhaps no affair illustrated this more than the renewed saga of the hijab, which flared up again in 2004 when French MPs voted to ban all overt religious symbols, including the Islamic veil, from state schools. Unlike in 1989 when the UOIF jumped in and stoked up the situation, this time the leadership took a far more subtle approach, aware that its image was at stake and that its response would be heavily scrutinised in the post 9/11 Western obsession with ‘moderate Islam’. As Breeze noted at the time, ‘We do not want to provoke the French government so as not to lose the gains we made over the past few years.’
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Although the UOIF leadership initially encouraged street demonstrations, they made it clear that they did not want to create any trouble for the French state. They urged people not to engage in violence and made a series of accommodationist statements. Breeze said: ‘We just do not want protestors to use slogans that are antagonistic to France, a
country where Muslims also have the liberty to perform their prayers in mosques. The veil ban, after all, is only restricted to state schools and Muslim women are still free to wear it in public.’
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He also explained, ‘We are not telling Muslim girls to take off the hijab. We are saying they should go to school and not wear a veil which is a distinctive sign of their religion.’
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Fouad Alaoui also made an appeal to young French women, declaring, ‘They should make their schooling a priority.’
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Yet in spite of all its efforts the UOIF had the rug pulled from under its feet by the French government. In 2003 whilst all the public debates were raging, the then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy travelled to Cairo to meet with Sheikh Tantawi of Al-Azhar. He obtained a fatwa which ruled that Islamic headscarves were not obligatory if prohibited by a national law. Clearly this move left the UOIF and other Islamic organisations in France feeling as though they had been completely bypassed and snubbed by the same government that had courted them for membership of its CFCM.

For an issue that had provoked so much anger and frustration, not only in France but among Muslims the world over, the UOIF’s approach was extraordinarily low key. Many believed that this should be its time to lead the way in fighting what was widely considered in Islamic circles to be an alarmist and Islamophobic gesture. Yamin Makri, the head of the more radical
Collectif des Musulmans de France
, criticised the UOIF for compromising and thereby losing legitimacy among young Muslims.
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Makri also laid into the UOIF for betting its hopes on institutional acknowledgement and for becoming conservative and biased.
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Yet the UOIF was clear that it did not want to lose the gains it had made in the French political sphere. As Breeze explained, ‘We are willing to lose the battle of the hijab but not France.’
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As such, it would appear that the UOIF has prioritised politics over core religious values as a means of maintaining international respectability – arguably a risky strategy that has the potential to alienate key elements within its support base. This is an issue that many
parts of the Brotherhood have struggled with over recent years, from the Syrians to the Egyptians to those in Europe. However, the Ikhwani in Europe are in a somewhat easier position than their counterparts in the Arab world in this respect. This is because their constituencies are very small and they are aware that they are in no position to become an alternative to the state. As such they have much less to lose.

Britain has long had a reputation for being a hotbed of Islamist activism. This was especially true during the 1980s and 1990s, to the point where its capital city was dubbed Londonistan. By this point the country had become home to a wide array of Islamist groups from moderate to militant and was a veritable melting pot of ideologies and organisations. Among those groups who were active in the UK was of course the Ikhwan, who like the myriad of other Islamist currents there sought to promote its
dawa
and to bring people to its way of thinking. It is because of these competing ideologies and currents, as well as the presence of large South Asian migrant communities, that the Ikhwan in Britain has been far more difficult to pin down than its counterparts in France. In fact, Ikhwani activity in the UK has tended to revolve around a few key personalities and to be less institutionalised than across the Channel.

The Brotherhood’s presence in Britain dates back to the 1950s, when Ikhwani students from the Arab world came to study in the UK. After 1954, they were joined by a number of key Egyptian brothers fleeing the clampdowns of President Nasser, who spent some time touring Britain to spread the word about the atrocities being committed by the nationalist regime, which was still being hailed as a great triumph by many Arab communities.
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However, the first solid Muslim Brotherhood activity in Britain came in the form of two student
groups. The first was the Muslim Students’ Society (MSS), set up in 1961, and the second was the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), established the following year. Both societies were founded by Ikhwani who had strong links to the mother branch in Egypt. This included the Egyptian Sheikh Ahmed al-Ahsan, who was studying in the UK and who has been described as Sheikh Yuuf al-Qaradawi’s twin because the two men went to school together and trained at Al-Azhar at the same time. Another key figure was the Indian scholar Mustafa Azami, who had been imprisoned in Egypt for his Ikhwani activities and had come to the UK to continue his PhD at Cambridge. With them were a number of Iraqi and Syrian Ikhwani students.