The Muslim Brotherhood has no place in British
society
In an effort to promote community
cohesion, we have handed influence to those who pose the greatest threat to it
There is a peculiar silence that descends whenever the conversation turns to
the Muslim Brotherhood. Not the thoughtful pause of academic
caution, but the smothering hush of political cowardice dressed as cultural
sensitivity. Britain, like much of the West, has become adept at not quite
saying what it knows to be true: that the Brotherhood does not speak for
British Muslims, but rather exploits their identity to advance a supremacist
agenda.
The
Muslim Brotherhood is not merely a theological school of thought, nor a minor
current within Islam’s vast tradition. It is a deliberate, well-structured
transnational political project, whose ultimate aim is the remaking of society
along Islamist lines. Its brilliance lies not in overt militancy, but in its
use of the democratic process to undermine democratic norms. It projects
moderation in public while preaching ideological rigidity behind closed doors.
Its agents are polished, fluent and adept at cloaking radicalism in the
language of human rights.
The Brotherhood does not win through force, but by stealth:
attending government roundtables, winning grants, dominating community
organisations and inserting itself into institutions as the presumed voice of
Muslim Britain. It does not shout about jihad in the streets; it whispers about
Islamophobia in council meetings while vilifying Muslims who
oppose its rule. It is a soft coup of identity, replacing pluralism with
obedience and religion with ideology.
The
British state, tragically, has often confused access with authenticity. In its
effort to promote “community
cohesion”, it has handed influence to those least representative of
the diversity within Muslim communities. Local authorities, government
departments and academic institutions regularly platform figures linked to
Brotherhood networks, mistaking their organisational presence for grassroots
legitimacy. The result is a disenfranchisement of moderate Muslim voices who
neither share the Brotherhood’s worldview nor possess the machinery to counter
it.
The consequences are serious. British Muslims today are
caught in a pincer movement: on one side, targeted by anti-Muslim bigotry; on
the other, suffocated by Islamist gatekeepers who label dissenters as traitors.
The Brotherhood has created a political ecosystem where Muslim identity is
defined not by faith, but by fealty to a cause. Its fiercest opponents are
often Muslims themselves, but their resistance is dismissed as inauthentic or
ignored altogether.
This
conflation of Islam with Islamism is not just inaccurate; it is dangerous. It
entrenches the myth that to be Muslim in Britain is to support reactionary
ideology, and it stokes division by pushing moderate Muslims to the margins. We
must stop treating ideological actors as cultural representatives. Real
inclusion means engaging with Muslims as citizens, not as clients of political
Islam.
The
2015 UK government review of the Muslim Brotherhood, commissioned by then-prime
minister David Cameron, concluded that the organisation is secretive and
operates with a dual discourse – moderate in public, radical in private. It
warned that the Brotherhood’s ideology and network pose a potential threat to
democratic values. Yet nearly a decade later, that report gathers dust while
the Brotherhood continues to embed
itself within civil society.
To
protect British Muslims, we must do more than condemn anti-Muslim hatred; we
must also confront the forces that seek to control Muslim life from within.
This is not repression. It is liberation: a refusal to allow theocratic
ideologues to masquerade as spokesmen for an entire faith.
Silence is not the price of tolerance. Moral
clarity is. The UK must reject the fiction that Islamist movements represent Muslim
identity. Only then can we ensure that British Muslims are no longer trapped
between the hammer of bigotry and the anvil of Islamist dominance.
David Martin Abrahams is former Vice
President of the Royal United Security Institute
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/c21c583b499c2f71
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