The European Observatory for Combating Extremism reported on Tuesday that the British government’s dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood raise a growing debate in light of the differences in European approaches towards the group, as London appears to be the least strict on this issue.
The Observatory said, in a report, “While several European countries are moving to tighten control over the Brotherhood’s activities, London appears more cautious in classifying and dealing with them, which raises questions about the limits of this approach and its repercussions on security and societal cohesion.”
He added, “The British government’s approach towards extremists is not only very far from the approach of the administration of US President Donald Trump, which classified some branches of the Brotherhood as terrorist organizations, but it is also much less strict than the positions of many European Union countries that do not adopt Trump’s tendencies.”
He pointed out that the political classes and security services in many European countries now consider extremists as opponents who must be confronted intellectually and legally.
The Observatory revealed that similar analyzes were regularly issued by the ministries of the interior and intelligence services throughout the European continent, noting that the administrative court in the French city of Nantes, this June, upheld the ban imposed by the local governorate on the “annual meeting of the Muslims of western France,” which the state considers part of the national branch of the Brotherhood.
The European Observatory wondered whether it was conceivable that officials within the British Home Office would seek to take a similar step, noting that the British security apparatus had actually decided that “non-violent political Islam is not its problem.”
According to the Observatory, some sections of the British security apparatus consider non-violent extremists “trusted allies” in the face of violent extremists from Al-Qaeda and ISIS, explaining that there is still a retreating group within the Labor Party that realizes that non-violent political Islam represents a real threat to liberal democracy.
