fbpx

Is this how Islamic radicals infiltrates European countries such as Sweden?

Culture - February 15, 2023

According to a new doctoral thesis, titled “Global Political Islam?”, western countries like Sweden is badly infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

For a long time, the Muslim Brotherhood, a sunni organization with millions of members, has been accused of infiltrating democratic societies through a long series of associations and organizations that functioned as a cover for its real purposes – to advance Islamic goals in the West.

After several years of studying the links between people in such organizations in Sweden the researcher Sameh Egyptson wrote his doctoral thesis and got it approved by one of Sweden’s oldest University established 1666, Lund University. More precisely by the faculty of Church and Mission Studies. He provides evidence that the Islamic League of Sweden is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood and its global operations.

This study is highly controversial as it exposes how extremists can infiltrate a democratic society and utilize its civil society of many different groups, clubs and charities and move them toward Islamic rules and traditions.

The suspicions are not new

To describe different Muslim associations to be appendage of the global Muslim Brotherhood had been done since the 1990s.

What is new is the deeper knowledge this paper gives. Based on Sameh Egyptson’s research on known associations between representative of the Muslim Brotherhood and its diversified European front organisations, together with analyzes of ideological similarities, literature reviews, he can make conclusions.

Egyptson argues that, for example, one of the political parties in the Swedish parliament, the Centre Party (RE), has been penetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood through mobilization of party membership and Muslim voters.

According to Egyptson the Islamic League of Sweden has over the years earned a reputation as the representative of Swedish Muslims in the media. They have been asked to mediate between police and Muslim communities during unrest and riots in the Muslim dominated suburbs.

Strategy for the long run

The starting point of the thesis is a reference to a document called the “European strategy of 1995” where the Muslim Brotherhood declared that they would use moderate rhetoric means in the pursuit of political power. The goal, in the long run, was the Islamisation of the Swedish society – both by a cultural acceptance and by demographic shifts.

The strategy was to outwardly use a moderate agenda to create enclaves for the Muslim community where they step by step could reject the Western values to implement an Islamic takeover.

Those goals have not been abandoned. They are patiently waiting for when Muslims have expanded demographically through immigration, reproduction and da’wah (conversion) into a position when they can reach a majority status. Muslims should participate in the political system in existing political parties without abandoning their fundamental Islamic values, but hide the thru purpose of their engagement. The goal is to establish Islamic order where sharia rules in Western countries like Sweden.

Stop financing via tax funds

This strategy can be stopped. But it requires that the Swedish state cut off all their funding of activities arranged by the League or adjacent Muslim Brotherhood organizations.

The thesis reveal that authorities “had willingly and faithfully afforded economic contributions to the religious, educational, and cultural activities of the network.”

During the last decade Swedish taxpayers have granted several billions Swedish kronor (several hundreds of millions of euros) to different Muslim organizations, such as the study association Ibn Rushd and the aid organization Islamic Relief Sweden. Local authorities have paid large sums of tax money to schools run by Muslim associations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Faced criticism but was approved

On their part, the Islamic League, the findings in the doctoral thesis are persistently denied. They dismiss the evidence as distortions, especially when the study connects the League’s Stockholm Mosque as a headquarters for the Muslim Brotherhood in Sweden.

“Global Political Islam?” is an attempt over 700 pages to demonize the Muslim Brotherhood, says a critic in Swedish media.

A more intellectual critic was put forward by one of the opponents during the PhD dissertation defense: Egyptson’s thesis fails to provide a clear and coherent empirical description of the Islamic League in Sweden, the nature of which it claims to classify. Nor are other central concepts defined.

Despite some criticism of method and designations the grading committee approved the thesis, but not unanimously.

Debate overshadowed by fear

Normally an academic work doesn’t create much fuzz in Sweden, but this study is widely debated in the media.

But the framing of the wider discussion is overshadowed by fear. On the day the PhD dissertation defense was held, all other activities in the University building were closed down. Police were present.

It is still highly controversial to analyze, study and question Muslim activities in Sweden.

Sameh Egyptson, himself an Egyptian Copt now secular and earlier in his life in Sweden engaged in leftwing activities, hopes that the debate will become more open and present about Muslim Brotherhood, their links to international extremist networks and their aim with all its activities in Sweden and elsewhere.