German and Turkish Brotherhood… A suspicious alliance and dangerous goals

Many representatives of the terrorist Brotherhood participated in a recent meeting organized by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), reflecting a dubious and dangerous alliance.

Sigrid Herman Marshall, one of the most important German experts on political Islam, wrote in an article published on Monday that the participation of the representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood in a conference organized by Diyanet, in the presence of representatives of the Turkish Islamic Union (DITIB), one of the most important arms of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is pushing the alliance between the two parties further.

Marshall, who writes regularly about the Brotherhood and political Islam and uses her opinions, said that the government authorities, the known representatives of the Brotherhood in Germany attended the meeting organized by “Diyanet”, but also the representative of the Islamic Council in Aachen, which the Constitution Protection Authority does not count “internal intelligence” on the Brotherhood circles in German territory to this day.

“At the end of September, a conference organized by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs was held in Istanbul, ostensibly to discuss prayer times and other religious matters, but in reality it was about setting rules that should be imposed on the Muslim communities in Europe” and thus exerting greater influence on them, the German expert explained.

“The co-operation partners and participants in this meeting are questionable at least”, she said. “The meeting was organized in co-operation with the European Council for Fatwa and Research, which the Authority for the Protection of the Constitution classifies as part of the Brotherhood’s network, and this reflects an increasing alliance between the latter, Diyanet and organizations in its orbit, such as DITIB”.

According to the final report of the meeting, the conference witnessed the participation of leading and influential elements from the Brotherhood, such as Ali Qeredaxi, Khaled Hanafi, the head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research in Germany, and the dean of the European Institute for Humanities (EIHW), whom the Constitution Protection Authority considers part of the Brotherhood’s terrorist network as well.

Ali Erbas, head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, Abdul Rahman Hakkali, head of the Supreme Council for Religious Affairs, and Hussein Halawa, one of the Brotherhood’s most important leaders in Europe and secretary-general of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, also participated in the conference.

The alliance extended to Scandinavian countries. The final report of the meeting said, “The meeting was preceded by a lengthy meeting via the Internet between the Scientific Committee and a number of imams and directors of Islamic centers in Scandinavian countries”.

The final report of the meeting stated that representatives of the Paris Mosque, the Islamic Council of France, the Turkish organization Milli Gorus and the Islamic Center in Aachen had taken part in the meeting.

The Islamic Center in Aachen is not included in the annual reports of the German Constitution Protection Authority, and it is not known whether the center is linked to membership in the Central Council of Muslims, but its participation in the Istanbul meeting for the first time clearly demonstrates its links to the Brotherhood, according to Herman Marshall.

The Istanbul Conference is not the first time the Brotherhood has met with Turkish organizations with official participation of the Turkish government represented by the Directorate of Religious Affairs that is directly under Erdogan. A similar meeting took place in 2016 at a Brotherhood center in Berlin.

At this time, the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution said in its annual report that the 2016 meeting saw the formation of the German branch of the European Council for Fatwa and Research.

Later, the same organizations and representatives of Diyanet participated in a symposium in Aachen in 2018.

In early 2019, Brotherhood representatives participated in a conference organized by DITIB at the Grand Mosque in Cologne, western Germany, leading to the formation of the so-called “Coordination Council” of Muslims in Europe, a move that reflected increased coordination between the two parties.

Herman Marshall concluded her report by saying that the recent Istanbul meeting represents a great danger, because the coordination of these groups’ positions is aimed at influencing the Islamic communities, and the possession of influence in the European societies on the pretext of representing a broad sector of the Muslim citizens in them, which is ultimately described in the realization of these groups’ interests.

“The Constitution Protection Authority classifies many of the associations and organizations that attended the Istanbul meeting as anti-constitutional and democratic, and aims to change the liberal political system in the long term”.