Europe Pursues the Muslim Brotherhood.. The Strasbourg Resolution Follows the Money, Not the Ideas

When the European Parliament voted two days ago, on 8 October 2026, on a resolution calling for a new strategy to confront the influence of Muslim Brotherhood networks, it was not declaring war on a religion or on a community. Rather, it was belatedly acknowledging a reality that European institutions had ignored for decades: that some of the entities welcomed as “civil society organizations” and “partners in dialogue” were advancing a political project very different from what they publicly claimed.

It is true that the resolution is non-binding and does not immediately place the group on the terrorist list, as that would require consensus among the member states. Its significance, however, lies in the fact that it changes the question being asked.

Europe is no longer asking: Do these people bear arms? Instead, it is asking: Where does their money come from, where does it go, and why are the doors of European institutions—institutions founded on democracy, freedom of opinion, and freedom of expression—opened to those who reject those values and whose conduct contradicts their very essence?

Ending funding based on associations’ “self-declaration,” tracing funds all the way to the ultimate beneficiary, and closing the halls of international organizations to suspicious front groups are all measures aimed at channels rather than beliefs, and at organizations rather than religion. That is precisely what makes them defensible within a state governed by the rule of law.

A New Generation with New Tools

What deserves particular attention is the transformation this movement has undergone in Europe. The founding generation came from the Arab world, speaking in a foreign idiom and employing an explicit and unmistakably religious discourse. The third generation, by contrast, was born in Paris, Brussels, and Stockholm, holds degrees in law and the social sciences, and speaks the language of rights and citizenship with a fluency that sometimes surpasses that of native-born citizens.

This generation does not need an openly declared hierarchical organization. A network of human-rights associations, youth organizations, and student initiatives overlapping in personnel and rhetoric is enough. When one association is dissolved, another emerges under a new name or in a neighboring country. The “Collective Against Islamophobia in France” was dissolved in 2020, and in its aftermath the “Collective Against Islamophobia in Europe” emerged from Belgium. A film produced by it was screened at Sciences Po in Paris only a few years later.

This generation has found fertile ground within left-wing and Green parties. These parties champion causes such as combating racism and discrimination and supporting Palestine, allowing the activist to enter through the door of legitimate causes; subsequently, criticism of the activist comes to be treated as criticism of the cause itself. Islamophobia—which is a real and troubling phenomenon—has thereby become a double shield: it gives this movement the right to speak on behalf of all Muslims, while turning any question about its funding or objectives into a ready-made accusation of racism against whoever dares to ask it.

What We Know and What We Do Not Know

Intellectual honesty, however, requires us to distinguish between what is established and what is probable. What is established is that networks and associations ideologically linked to the international Muslim Brotherhood organization exist in several European countries, and that some of them have received public funding and secured seats within European and international bodies.

It is also established that individuals from this milieu have risen to important party positions. This occurred in Sweden in 2014, when Omar Mustafa, chairman of the Islamic Association, was elected to a leading position in the Social Democratic Party in Stockholm, only to resign within a week under pressure from the ensuing controversy. It happened again with Mehmet Kaplan in April 2016, when he was serving as housing minister for the Green Party and resigned amid controversy over “extremist links.”

It is likewise established that the French administrative judiciary upheld the dissolution of associations that, in its view, had moved beyond combating discrimination into incitement.

Although European security services have not, to date, presented conclusive public evidence of an “organized infiltration” of political parties by the third generation of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies through a centrally directed plan involving financing and guidance, those working in the field of political Islam, along with specialists and experts, continue to observe such processes taking place at full speed, yet without leaving behind clear evidence that could be used to secure convictions—just as has happened, and continues to happen, in many Arab countries.

Those who follow this phenomenon say that concealment is itself part of the strategy pursued by the international Muslim Brotherhood organization since its establishment in Europe in 1982 and up to the present day.

This strategy was applied almost literally in the Austrian experience. Following large-scale raids in 2020 against individuals described as belonging to a Brotherhood network, investigations ultimately resulted in charges being dropped against some of them, while an independent commission concluded that the preoccupation with such networks had diverted attention from a genuine threat and handed those organizations their strongest card: the ability to present themselves as victims.

The Right Path

What Europe needs is not the policing of intentions, but the imposition of transparency: transparency regarding foreign funding for associations; transparency regarding the relationship between political parties and the associations that support them electorally; and clear standards governing who is received within European institutions and who is excluded.

Left-wing and Green parties themselves must understand that defending Muslims against discrimination does not mean embracing everyone who claims to speak on their behalf, and that today’s allies among hardline Islamists will not tomorrow share the values of equality and freedom of conscience upon which those parties were founded.

At the same time, those leading this battle must beware of sliding into a dangerous course that became clearly visible in the Strasbourg chamber itself on 8 October, when a far-right member called for the mass deportation of migrants. Whoever conflates political Islam with Muslims gives the Muslim Brotherhood its most precious gift: the opportunity to appear, in the eyes of millions of European Muslims, as their sole defender.

The Strasbourg resolution represents the right beginning to what we believe will be a long process. Its success, however, will be measured by Europe’s ability to close the channels of money and influence to this sprawling Muslim Brotherhood project without closing its doors to its Muslim citizens.

Paris: 5:00 p.m., Cairo time.