Disillusioned militancy: the crisis of militancy and variables of disengagement of the European Muslim Brotherhood

Abstract

Contrary to the various studies on militant Islam in Europe seeking to explain the mobilization and socialization techniques European Muslims’ religious organizations employ, this article aims to understand a poorly researched phenomenon: the militancy crisis within Islamic movements. Although European Islamist movements have encountered some success, the difficulties they face cannot be ignored. Indeed, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), one of the most important organizations, faces a wave of internal disputes, which has led to numerous defections. This article seeks to explain the different variables driving this exit process. The various semi-structured interviews which were conducted with former executives and militants of the organization in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy highlight two factors that led to defection. The first is ideological. These militants are no longer convinced that the MB ideology is capable of solving the problems Muslims face. In addition to ideological disillusion, militants claim that their departure is due to the internal workings of an organization characterized by a totalitarian streak, which fails to satisfy the aspirations of its members, despite their commitment.

Notes

1. Le Monde, 11 juillet 2013.

2. The Islamist parties of Tunisia (Ennahdha), of Morroco (the Party of Justice and Development) and of Turkey (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi) are also affected by dynamics of defection.

3. Born in Egypt in 1939, he was one of the founders of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth in the 1970s. He moved to Britain in 1994 and participated in the creation of the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain. He is currently head of the think tank, specializing on terrorism, the Centre for the Study of Terrorism.

4. He is currently Director of the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), a think tank dedicated to the fight against racism, in Brussels.

5. After a career as head of associations, he embarked on a ‘religious’ stand-up routine by giving two shows he wrote (Je vous déclare la paix et Le Chemin de la gare).

6. After having long been led by Swedish Chakib Benmakhlouf, it is currently led by the Franco-Tunisian Abdallah Benmansour. The FIOE is headquartered in Brussels since 2007 – it was previously located in the suburbs of Leicester in the UK – in order to develop a lobbying on European institutions.

7. For Antonio Gramsci, the figure of the intellectual aims at fostering, among members of the class to which it is organically connected, an awareness of their community of interest, to cause in this class a conception of homogeneous and independent world. This analysis was borrowed from Jean-Marc Piotte.

8. Mouvement de la tendance islamique (Islamic Trend Movement) founded in 1981 and later became the Ennahda Movement.

9. Within the core of the MB was circulating a rumour that French officials of the UOIF would not have called for demonstrations against the bill on conspicuous religious symbols in schools, in exchange for which the government would naturalize senior Brotherhood officials who had not yet acquired French nationality.

10. In France, the UOIF is thus engaged alongside veiled schoolgirls expelled in 1990 and issued a fatwa (religious opinion) condemning urban violence during the 2005 riots. In the UK, the Brotherhood associations tried to ban the publication of The Satanic Verses (1988) of the British writer of Indian origin, Salman Rushdie. In many European countries, they have called on Muslims to boycott Danish products in protest against cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in Jyllands-Posten in September 2005.

11. In France, several groups, such as les Étudiants musulmans de France, les Jeunes musulmans de France, les Imams de France, l’Association médicale Avicenne de France and ou encore la Ligue française de la femme musulmane, have been created.

12. Unione delle Comunita e Organizzazioni Islamiche is the MB’s Italian branch which would control 60per cent of the country’s mosques.

13. Even within the UOIF, an impressive initiative has arisen recently through the reflection club, Fils de France. Its president, Camel Bechikh, acknowledges both his affiliation to the UOIF and dissenting character of the club within the organization. Inspired by the ideas of Tareq Oubrou, Camel Bechikh promotes a plurality of voices within the organization and tries to propose a parallel theology of acculturation. He calls not only for European Islam to get rid of its traditional trappings through a French practice of Islam, but also for a cultivation of French patriotism in the heart of the Muslim believers in France. There is no equivalent to this initiative at this moment in the European Brotherhood space.