The Muslim Brotherhood in the UK: Ideological Expansion and a Failure to Confront It
More than two decades after waves of terrorism swept across Europe, the United Kingdom still faces a growing challenge — the infiltration of Muslim Brotherhood ideology into its institutions.
This comes amid repeated accusations that the British government has chosen “deliberate silence” toward the Brotherhood’s influence, which represents the oldest intellectual root of extremist movements worldwide.
In a report published by the Australian magazine Quillette, researcher Daniel Allington wrote that London “appears incapable of seriously addressing the greatest internal threat it faces” — the ideological expansion of the Muslim Brotherhood within universities, charities, and community organizations under the guise of “religious representation” for British Muslims.
Brotherhood influence in British institutions
According to Quillette, individuals and organizations linked to the Brotherhood now wield substantial influence across the UK’s religious, charitable, and economic sectors. They control large investments, real estate portfolios, and educational, social, and cultural services — enabling them to shape younger generations of British Muslims directly.
The report describes this system as “an integrated network of organizational loyalties,” carefully managed within seemingly lawful institutions that, in reality, promote an ideology hostile to Western values and seek to impose conservative religious and social norms on local communities.
An official inquiry dating back to the Cameron era
The report recalls that former Prime Minister David Cameron commissioned an official investigation in 2015 into the Brotherhood’s activities in Britain. The inquiry concluded that groups and figures affiliated with the Brotherhood had “exerted significant influence over major Islamic institutions,” including the National Union of Muslim Students, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Muslim Association of Britain, and various charities and mosques.
Some of these entities had openly supported Hamas and praised its attacks against civilians without issuing consistent or clear condemnations. Many Brotherhood-linked organizations also failed to distance themselves from the writings of Sayyid Qutb, the group’s most prominent ideologue, whose works inspired extremist movements both in the Middle East and the West.
Contradictions in British policy
Despite Cameron’s findings, the British government — according to Quillette — has taken no meaningful steps to restrict the Brotherhood’s operations or monitor its funding.
Some official bodies have even continued to cooperate with them. In 2023, for instance, the UK Ministry of Defence relied on the Muslim Council of Britain to endorse military chaplains, even though that same council had publicly opposed counter-extremism programs such as the “Prevent” strategy.
The report argues that this approach “reflects a dual policy in dealing with the Brotherhood threat,” granting institutional legitimacy to groups ideologically tied to anti-secular movements.
Organized grassroots penetration
According to Quillette, Brotherhood-affiliated groups work to consolidate their presence within Muslim communities in Britain through a comprehensive model of religious, educational, and social services, giving them near-total control over the daily lives of Muslim families.
The report calls this approach a “soft method of ideological control,” designed to create what Brotherhood theorists term a “complete Islamic environment,” where an individual’s life is governed from birth to death according to religious norms, independent of the state or civil society.
The decline of reformist discourse
Allington notes that the new generation of Brotherhood preachers and activists in Britain has become more hardline than its predecessors. Strict forms of religiosity — such as full veiling, social segregation, and literal adherence to religious practices — have increased sharply in Muslim-majority neighborhoods over the past decade.
He warns that this shift “transfers the ideological conflict of the Arab world into the heart of British cities,” undermining citizenship and integration values long held up as hallmarks of the UK’s tolerant social model.
Europe’s dilemma of complacency
The situation in the UK mirrors that of other European nations, particularly France, which faces similar challenges.
According to an official report cited by Le Figaro in May, the Union of Muslims of France has been identified as the Brotherhood’s main branch in the country, controlling 139 mosques and 68 affiliated sites — around 7% of Islamic places of worship — along with 280 associations and 21 schools.
The report emphasized that the movement’s goal is to establish “local social systems” where strict cultural and religious norms are progressively imposed, including veiling, behavioral restrictions on women, and control over social life from childhood to adulthood.
While several Arab countries — including the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan — classify the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization threatening societal stability, Europe continues to offer it broad legal protection to operate under charitable, religious, or educational labels.
For Quillette, this divergence between Arab and Western approaches reflects a failure to grasp the true nature of Islamist threats. The West, it argues, often confuses freedom of belief with the political use of religion as a tool to undermine modern state structures from within.
The need for an intellectual, not just security-based, response
The report concludes that Britain faces a critical test: either it continues to tolerate Brotherhood ideology or redefines the boundaries of religious freedom to safeguard society against politically motivated organizations.
Countering extremism, Quillette argues, must go beyond policing and surveillance. It requires dismantling the ideological and organizational framework that the Brotherhood has built over decades within British institutions and communities.
Allington concludes: “Persistently ignoring the Brotherhood threat, despite overwhelming evidence, is not an act of tolerance or neutrality — it is a failure to defend democracy against its true enemies.”
