Dr. Bahaa Helmy Writes: Europe Confronts the Crimes and Ideology of the Brotherhood on Its Soil

In 2020 the European Union adopted a new strategy to combat terrorism and extremism, aimed at drying up the sources of terrorism, monitoring the organizational and financial activities of the terrorist Brotherhood organization, and identifying the balances and assets of the entities and individuals involved in terrorist financing and money laundering.

This was in light of the results of the investigations conducted in France after the terrorist attacks that struck the countries of the European Union – claiming dozens of innocent victims – which revealed the ideology and thought of the Brotherhood organization and its threat to European societies.

We previously published an article in this space at the beginning of 2019 entitled “Europe in the Embrace of Brotherhood Thought”, in which we pointed out that silence about or covering up the terrorist Brotherhood project would undermine the principles, values and stability of Europe.

It is true that the Brotherhood organization was made by Britain, which installed Hassan al-Banna as its Guide and wove its principles, which do not believe in the state or national belonging, while giving the organization’s ideology a political colouring to the effect that the rule of Islam is total and comprehensive, and set its goals of restoring the caliphate by focusing on the individual and the family, then the peoples, up to the stage of the desired empowerment according to their conception and mentality.

Britain still provides an umbrella for the continued work of the “Muslim Charities Forum” in supporting and financing a large number of charities affiliated with the Brotherhood organization, which has close relations with the British Labour Party and many civil organizations and media platforms; Britain also hosts many al-Qaeda leaders and terrorists and gives them protection, subsistence and salaries in return for carrying out orders and instructions.

As for the other European countries, they sense the danger and are rising up against the crimes of the Brotherhood, which are being uncovered one after another, whether in the field of money laundering or terrorist financing, or in the field of spreading the ideology of extremism and violence that threatens those societies. Something that Egypt previously revealed to the world and that becomes clearer day after day.

Many studies and reports have appeared on the crimes of the Brotherhood organization in Europe, such as money laundering and terrorist financing through the use of “encrypted digital currencies, building cash reserves and hidden assets, the route of money transfers, alliances with international gangs engaged in kidnapping and drugs, and online fundraising”, to which we add the crimes of electronic piracy.

The Brotherhood’s involvement in financing terrorist organizations in the world by exploiting relief funds and under the cover of charitable work was announced, and the organization has managed to integrate into the European economy and build huge fortunes that place it among the billionaires by relying on (halal trade)..

Austria passed an anti-terrorism law and a review of the Brotherhood’s associations and schools, which it considers hotbeds for manufacturing extremism, and approved the largest security budget in its history to combat terrorism this year, estimated at 3.25 billion euros.

In May 2021 Germany announced the involvement of the Ansaar International group in Germany in financing Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria and the Somali al-Shabaab movement, and it formed a specialized committee to draw up recommendations for dealing with the Brotherhood organization, which has managed to penetrate the German system through Islamic organizations and associations and places of worship, and the ideology of violence that has come to threaten society.

On 5 October this month the German police announced raids on dozens of homes and offices involved in money laundering and terrorist financing operations by transferring sums exceeding 100 million euros to Syria and Turkey; 70 suspects were arrested in 7 German states, and the discovery of the transfer of an amount estimated at 1.6 billion euros to terrorists over the previous 5 years was announced.

Last August France issued the law reinforcing respect for the principles of the Republic, comprising 70 articles and based on five basic principles, namely (secularism and the neutrality of public services; the commitment of associations to the republican contract and control over domestic and foreign funding and donations; a ban on spreading hatred on the internet; not allowing education in places of worship or homes except with a permit, together with a ban on forced marriage and a ban on issuing virginity certificates; and commitment to the separation of religion and state).

This law amounts to a real war on, and a curbing of, the unbridled Brotherhood organization in France. This requires the security services to take all measures and to exercise care and caution against terrorist revenge crimes.