Tough times for Muslim Brotherhood and its Qatari sponsors in Europe

By Majed Nehme  – The Arab weekly -The latest book demystifying Qatar’s policy on the Muslim Brotherhood is Mohammed Sifaoui’s “Taqiyya, How the Muslim Brotherhood wants to Infiltrate France.

Despite an abundance of books, reports, investigations and debates devoted to the murky games played by the Qatari monarchy, a documentary broadcast by the French-German TV channel ARTE will stand as a reference on the subject.The documentary is not the first significant work by journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, co-writers of this investigation. Malbrunot reported on the Middle East for Le Figaro. Chesnot is a member of the editorial staff of the public radio France Inter.

Both men are fluent in Arabic and are familiar with the complex realities of the Middle East. In 2004, while reporting on the war in Iraq, they were kidnapped and held hostage for 124 days by an armed group calling itself the Islamic Army of Iraq. They were freed through the efforts of French and Syrian intelligence services and since then have written several books devoted to the Middle East, including “Qatar Papers,” which served as the basis for the documentary “Qatar: guerre d’influence sur l’islam d’Europe” (“Qatar: A War of Influence on Islam in Europe”).

What is it all about?

“Initially,” they wrote, “we were rather impressed by the success story embodied by this small gas emirate. We did not believe that it was at the same time developing a policy to gain control of Islam in France and in Europe. We were far from the truth.”They said they were fooled by Qatar’s capacity for concealment of its strategy to spread political Islam as defined by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Chesnot and Malbrunot said an anonymous whistle-blower, whose identity they refuse to reveal, opened their eyes to the suspected deception. They said the person gave them computer files containing information from the Qatar Charity NGO controlled by the state.They said they were given “hundreds of e-mail exchanges between [Qatar Charity] and the beneficiaries of its largesse, most often associations close to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic movement supported by Qatar outside of its borders. It also contained records of bank transfers, e-mails and tables recording the amounts of aid paid to Islamic associations, sums intended for the construction of schools and mosques or for the purchase of real estate.”

Malbrunot’s and Chesnot’s investigation involved more than two years of meetings and confrontations with the leaders of the associations and Islamic NGOs in Europe mentioned in the documents and who benefited from the largesse of Qatar Charity.They said they were particularly stunned by the size of the sums granted, the identity of the beneficiaries, their vague and pre-established versions of the facts and the purpose of these operations. They asked: “Why fund an Islamic centre in Alta in northern Norway? Or one on the island of Jersey, better known as a tax haven than for its tiny Muslim community? Why buy a high school in France?

“Little by little, a real spider’s web appeared to us, revealing that Europe was a priority for Qatar Charity,” they said.The strategy of influence peddling, control and instrumentalisation of Muslims of Europe indicated by the documents carried great prejudice to these Muslims, insofar as it credits the Islamophobic cliche of a new “Islamic invasion” of Europe, a new “conquest” and “great transfer,” cliches spread in times of crisis by a European far right bent on hammering the identity issue.

It also bears something to worry public opinion subjected to brainwashing by the mainstream media where the amalgam of Islam, immigration and terrorism has become commonplace.The documents shed light on Qatar Charity’s financing of 22 projects in France, about 40 in Italy and dozens of others throughout Europe over a 10-year period for about $123 million. This is an important sum but not sufficient to demonstrate all the workings of the strategy of influence over European Muslims.The documentary, however, does not pay enough attention to the funding by Qatar of media that relay and amplify the discourse of political Islam and have an influence far more important than mosques, cultural centres and associations.

At the top of the list of the media outlets is Al Jazeera, which participates shamelessly in spreading the Muslim Brotherhood’s message, trampling in the process on all rules of ethics. Al Jazeera is not only picked up by the millions of satellite dishes dotting the roofs of European suburbs, it is distributed free by cable operators right under the nose and with the blessing of the Conseil Superieur de l’Audiovisuel, the French regulatory authority for audio-visual media.Among the benefactors and donors of Qatar Charity, which is supposed to be a private NGO, are members of the ruling Qatari dynasty, including Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.

Al Jazeera, a real propaganda outlet and a weapon of psy-war against those who dare oppose Sheikh Tamim’s policies and his conception of Islam, is financed directly from Qatari state coffers at a cost of several hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

So, it should not be a surprise that among the 13 conditions imposed on Qatar by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for lifting the sanctions against it was the closing of Al Jazeera and Qatar Charity.Before the broadcast of the documentary on ARTE, the French-German channel was subjected to pressure and intimidation to remove the documentary from its programming. The Qatari government tried and failed.

The satirical French weekly Le Canard enchaine, generally citing reliable sources, revealed in its September 18 issue: “The Qatari authorities are deeply concerned about this documentary, which has already been broadcast in Switzerland and Belgium… As to Al Jazeera channel, belonging to the emir of Qatar, it is desperately seeking to acquire the international broadcasting rights of the documentary,” surely to bury it for good.Far from complying with the injunctions of the Qatari lobby, ARTE maintained its programming.Qatari authorities have closed Qatar Charity UK, which had acted as the headquarters of the organisation in Europe.

During the preview screening of the documentary, Chesnot said Qatar stopped financing the project of the Museum of Islamic Civilisations in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, which was mentioned in the documentary as one of the beneficiaries of Qatar Charity’s largesse.Was it a tactical retreat or a definitive abandonment of the strategy of exploiting the Brotherhood’s version of Islam in France and in Europe in the service of Qatar’s destabilising policies in the region? Was it a real retreat or an opportunistic move?Qatar has its back to the wall, with its influence strategy being decried at all levels. There are many books that demystify its policy of support for the Muslim Brotherhood. The latest example is Franco-Algerian journalist Mohammed Sifaoui’s “Taqiyya, Comment les Freres musulmans veulent infiltrer la France” (“Taqiyya, How the Muslim Brotherhood wants to Infiltrate France”).

In an interview with Le Figaro, Sifaoui said the Brotherhood’s ideology “is a totalitarian ideology that seeks to standardise thought and society. Their goal is not so much to Islamise the country as to take power within the Muslim community, to weigh on France.”“The Muslim Brothers are also dangerous because they insidiously attack all the universal values ​​considered as gains in democracies: secularism, equality between men and women, the rights of sexual and religious minorities…,” he said. “In addition, they create dividing factors by spreading hatred and rejection of the other. Finally, through their imposture of being victimised, their contempt for the republic and its principles, they intellectually arm potentially violent people and surreptitiously legitimise their actions.”

It is to the credit of both authors of this informative documentary to have contributed to revisiting the inexhaustible debate on the role of the advocates and financiers of political Islam in Europe, but the debate is not over.