Last week, the United Arab Emirates government issued what was likely a routine communiqué sanctioning various individuals and organisations it alleges belong to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) – a proscribed terrorist organisation in the Emirates. While the UAE has long sanctioned MB figures at home and abroad, this particular press release attracted mainstream attention: broadsheet newspapers like The Telegraph picked up on it (including comments from CEP Senior Advisor, Ian Acheson), and even X owner Elon Musk amplified the story to his 212+ million followers.  

In addition to naming 11 individuals the UAE alleges to be affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the release also consists of eight UK-based organisations – all with innocuous enough names that would scarcely raise a regulatory eyebrow.  

Unlike in the UAE and several other Middle-Eastern states, the Muslim Brotherhood is not outlawed in Britain and in the absence of specific intelligence it is impossible to corroborate the UAE’s allegations that either the individuals or organisations named are indeed connected to the MB.  

Therefore, the purpose of this analysis is not to pile undue scrutiny onto organisations which are not deemed to have broken any laws in the United Kingdom, but to use the sanctioning of these organisations to provide a rare window into the structure, organisation and activism of the MB in Britain and other Western countries.  

The Muslim Brotherhood arrived in Britain, Europe and North America most often via students coming to study in the West and activist-exiles fleeing persecution in their home countries, where the Islamist party has faced repression. Despite having the freedoms to operate legally in most Western democracies, the Muslim Brotherhood nonetheless pursued a policy of obsessive secrecy, founding a wide array of associations in order to advance its cause rather than openly adopting a political platform.  

Most attention and scrutiny has fallen on those organisations which purport to be nationally representative of Muslims and pose as their interlocutors with the state. The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), for example, was named by former Communities Secretary Michael Gove MP as the UK affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, while a 2015 official government review into the Muslim Brotherhood named the MAB as “dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood”.  

A similar structure is pursued in most Western states: the establishment of nationally representative organisations which seek media coverage and dialogue with local and national authorities, purportedly on behalf of a Muslim community portrayed as monolithically aligned on several key issues of Islamist concern.  

Beneath the organisations which dominate both media coverage and scrutiny of Muslim Brotherhood activities in the West though, there appear to be dozens, if not hundreds of organisations which are in some way part of the MB movement, from registered companies and charities, to think tanks, academic centres, religious associations, sports clubs, and more.  

Some of these organisations are active, others are registered but inactive or have been struck off by Companies House. Some may have been investigated or admonished by the Charity Commission for extremism, for questionable charitable activities or links to Muslim Brotherhood umbrella groups like the Union of Good (UoG) – others will have never raised any alarm whatsoever. None will ever willingly reveal any connection to the MB, while even employees and volunteers may not be aware of the true political nature of the organisations they serve.  

Company directors – likely members of the Muslim Brotherhood themselves - will hold multiple positions in these organisations simultaneously, and often appoint relatives, from siblings to sons and daughters, to similar positions within the ecosystem. They may subtly change the spelling of a name or include middle names to make it harder to connect the dots.  

These charities and enterprises hold multiple parallel purposes. They make it possible to advance the MB’s cause of dawah (proselytising) at the most grassroots level possible, at the level of the individual. This strategy is in keeping with the spirit of grassroots dawah advocated by MB founder, Hassan al-Banna, who believed in changing minds to change the state.  

The MB’s goal is - rather than outright recruiting people to its cause or spreading its political message - to slowly and imperceptibly re-organise society from the individual up, so that the acceptance of a need for an Islamic state governed by sharia (Islamic law) becomes widespread enough to implement and opposition to it withers. The MB does not mind if this takes several generations to achieve, as long as they are working towards this eventual goal.  

To give an example, the MB will even go so far as to provide everyday services at a local level – such as counselling or sports instruction – which do not promulgate MB ideas, but provide a version of those endeavours which conform to an Islamist view of the world and eliminate any traces of liberal, secular values.  

At their most ambitious, MB projects will seek to provide Muslims in their spheres of influence with “cradle to the grave” provision. This strategy has given rise to concern among several European governments over “Islamist separatism”, the attempt to cut Muslims off spiritually, intellectually and culturally from the perceived surrounding corruption of secular, Western societies. A succinct explainer on Islamist separatism delivered by CEP advisory board member, Magnus Ranstorp, can be found here.  

Some of the most pertinent examples include the “mega-mosque” building projects which have come in for scrutiny around Europe: several of which contain a creche, a mortuary and everything in between: schools, libraries, gyms, swimming pools. The objective is to effectively make clients out of the local Muslim population and to decrease their interaction with, and reliance on, the state and social services. While many religious groups seek to provide various services, the totalising nature of the MB project, the fact that it is administered by a group whose worldview is at odds with liberal democracy, and the risk of preventing people within those communities from accessing the rights accorded to them by the state presents a different order of concern.  

At another level, these innocuously named enterprises and associations further help to accrue social capital and trust for members of the MB, embedding them further into society and helping to leverage influence on local, regional and national level. This may include membership in advisory boards, business councils, interfaith meetings and more – all with the intention of very gradually advancing the MB cause. It also means that while MB members themselves are content to participate fully in society and receive all the rights and benefits that entails, they adopt a paternalistic attitude towards the wider Muslim population – preferring to shield them from such corrupting influences.  

This view was expressed by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood until his death in 2022, who advocated for the creation of a “small society within the larger society [the West], otherwise [Muslims] will melt in it like salt in water.” 

Finally, this constellation of organisations helps the MB to sustain itself financially. To this end, many, if not most, of the businesses operated by MB members will be perfectly legitimate, such as property or accounting companies. This means that if one funding source were to dry up – such as real estate, foreign state support or charitable giving (zakat) – there would be no killer blow to the movement.  

While the Muslim Brotherhood is considered a terrorist group by the UAE, this is not the case in Britain.  However, the existence of a sprawling archipelago of organisations erected in order to very gradually advance an Islamist cause is an entirely different challenge to a security one. Formulating a response, or even discerning whether it is indeed worthy of a response, first requires gathering the necessary information and knowledge on the movement’s activities, so that the public and policymakers are better informed on the decades-long history of MB activism in Britain. At present, this knowledge is sorely lacking and is not routinely collected or compiled by any governmental body, let alone shared with the public. Tackling Islamist extremism in Britain, from the gradualists of the Muslim Brotherhood to the jihadists of Islamic State, will be impossible until the full width and breadth of this disparate and multidimensional movement is understood.