Ramadan donations reveal danger of Brotherhood’s political influence in Europe and America

Nahla Abdel Moneim

The Brotherhood organization in the West relies on donations as a primary input for funding, and it uses religious and humanitarian events to enhance its proceeds of donations. With the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, the group’s institutions have begun urging members to increase their donations to pay zakat, take care of the needy, and other activities.

The Brotherhood is behind a large group of foundations spread between Europe and the United States, and these institutions constitute a social umbrella to collect donations. Most notably, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim Association of Britain and other associations that work to carry out the Brotherhood’s agenda.

US Brotherhood’s donation game

Brotherhood institutions in the United States have used the month of Ramadan for more donations, as CAIR published a poster on its official website calling on its followers to pay their zakat money to the foundation. CAIR has set a financial goal that it seeks to reach during the holy month, which is to collect donations in the first ten days amounting to $850,000, of which it collected $163,000 during the first two days of Ramadan.

CAIR used to update the poster for its donations according to different occasions and in line with the political situation, as the foundation published invitations for donations during the widespread Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the death of African-American citizen George Floyd at the hands of a US police officer. CAIR argued that the donations would go to defend those detained in connection with the protests, as the protests coincided with the precautionary measures set to reduce the spread of the corona virus in the country.

During the height of the spread of the corona virus, CAIR was keen to intensify its calls for donations, but controlling these funds remains a thorny matter in light of the accusations against the Brotherhood employing these associations as a cover to support terrorist groups.

The country’s organizing institutions have become more keen on interfering in political matters and forming pressure cycles within the community. Recently, CAIR has been lobbying investigators to reopen the file of Malcolm X’s death, and it has also demanded a reduction in the police budget as part of a major campaign including a request to provide the expenditures of the police budget to spend on the poorest neighborhoods in the country, in addition to drafting bills to reorganize the country’s security services.

It seems that the growing influence of the Brotherhood in the United States is being used to undermine the regimes opposing the terrorist organization in the Middle East, as Brotherhood members are trying to woo new President Joe Biden to support their views by employing the human rights file politically.

European Brotherhood donations

The countries of the European Union have become more vigilant than Washington regarding the use of public events as an entry point to increase donations for the benefit of the Brotherhood, and this European vigilance has not appeared in tightening procedures on the group’s donations during Ramadan only, but rather it was preceded by tight monitoring since the corona pandemic, especially in Britain and France.

The government in France is tightening its monitoring of the Brotherhood as part of a strategy to crack down on militant Islamist groups after the attacks that struck the country at the end of 2020. The French authorities impose tight control over donations and activities related to the Brotherhood, and they are also working to prevent cooperation between the organization’s branches in France and in other countries by restricting imams to domestic citizens, as well as Germany, which is discussing a law to ban foreign donations to mosques.