For the past year, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), tasked with combating extremist groups in Germany, has been running a campaign to raise awareness among parliamentarians about the dangers posed by the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).

In a report dated 2 February 2019, the BfV posits that despite its constitutional facade, the Brotherhood pursues secret goals contrary to democracy and the rule of law. It furthermore points up that, in the long run, the Brotherhood is more of a threat to Germany than Al-Qaeda and Daesh.

After a year of awareness raising, the BfV concluded that the Brotherhood no longer has the means to exert influence over Muslims in Germany.

The campaign conducted by the Federal Office, under the umbrella of the Interior Ministry, was at odds with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had been interacting with the Brotherhood since the beginning of the Arab Spring, and had opened a special office for this purpose.

The Brotherhood had been sponsored since 1945 by the MI6 and since 1953 by the CIA. During the Cold War, the Anglo-Americans called on their French and German allies to give hospitality to those MB leaders that NATO had enlisted against the Soviet Union. It was in this context that the Egyptian Said Ramadan created the Islamic Center in Munich and ran a program funded by the US Congress on Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe for the USSR. [1] In the 1980s, Germany granted political asylum to the Syrian branch of the Brotherhood embroiled in a failed coup attempt against the government of the Syrian Arab Republic.

In 2011, while the Anglo-Americans were endeavouring to place the Brotherhood in power throughout the Middle East, Germany resorted to the MB elements at home. US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, who became number two at the UN, entrusted Volker Perthes, head of the German think tank SWP, with the mission of crafting a full and unconditional capitulation plan that he hoped to impose on Syria. [2] However, in 2017 US President Donald Trump cut off his administration’s support to Daesh and at the end of 2018, the new German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, decided to shift its policy toward the Brotherhood, giving rise to the BfV campaign.

Contrary to what its name might suggest, the Muslim Brotherhood is not a religious society, but a secret political organization. It is organized on the model of English Freemasonry and takes great care to conceal the identity of its members. However, almost all the jihadist leaders, from Osama bin Laden to Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, came from within its ranks.