Inside the secrets of the Muslim Brotherhood

For a large part of public opinion, awareness of the presence of radicalized Islamist groups in the West materialized dramatically only on 11 September 2001. It is therefore not surprising that even Lorenzo Vidino, today one of the leading experts on Islam in Europe and North America and director of the George Washington University Program on Extremism, departed from that very day to produce the long essay Islamists of the West. Stories of Muslim Brothers in Europe and America (Egea). In it, over twenty years of study are condensed on the mobilization of jihadist networks in the West, on the policies to combat radicalization implemented by various governments but above all on the dynamics that feed and support the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Why is the date of September 11 also important for your personal relationship with Islam?
First of all because I grew up in Milan, not far from the mosque in Viale Jenner, and some boys from the Islamic community were my companions in football matches. So when the events of 11 September happened, I was emotionally very involved. But also because that fact changed my professional direction. At the time I was finishing my thesis in Comparative Public Law and I had a ticket in my pocket to the USA where I would continue my studies in Law, but when I arrived in the States I found a job in a small study center that dealt with Islam. I decided to leave law to prepare for admission to a Master in security and international relations which then became a doctorate and from then on this has remained my main interest.

This work, however, does not speak of Jihad or Al-Qaeda, but of the Muslim Brotherhood. Why, among the many groups that animate the world of militant and radical Islamism, is this one so important?
The Muslim Brotherhood is the oldest and most influential Islamist movement in the world and therefore a fundamental building block for understanding Islam in Europe and the West in general. Despite the small numbers of their militants - in many countries we are speaking of a few hundred people - they play a very important role in shaping the Muslim communities of each Western country and in managing relations between these and the various governments by occupying many of the pivotal positions. It is they who, for example, in Italy sit with the Minister of the Interior to sign an agreement or who are granted the contract to enter prisons to play the role of cultural mediators. We cannot speak of Jihad or radical Islam without starting with the Brothers.

Yet very little on this is discussed in the media.
In the countries of the Middle East there is a lot of critical and historical literature on the subject, but in the West this is not the case. I once asked a senior British official why his government in 2014 chose me to be a member of the Brotherhood Study Commission. He told me: "There are at least forty experts on the Brotherhood in Egypt, a dozen in Jordan, as many in Syria. But people that study it in the West, in practice, there is only you ». In the media of some countries, such as France, we read some articles but above all from a political point of view it is a slippery subject and onto which few venture. While in fact Western opinion on the Jihadists is unequivocal and does not lend itself to interpretation, with the Brothers we enter a more opaque area, where secrets cloud the truth, where facts and opinions mix and everything is more difficult to prove.

To enter these dynamics, you chose the path of narrating the testimonies of some people who played leading roles in the Brothers and then decided to leave the organization. How was the meeting with these exiles from the movement?
I already knew some of them before starting to write the book, such as Kamal Helbawy whom I met in 2005 when he was one of the leaders of the Brothers. With others I had to create the opportunity for a first approach but now some of them I think I can consider my friends. The difficulty in listening to their stories was precisely in maintaining the researcher's awareness, that is, filtering their testimony and dealing with their desire, unconscious or not, to become the spokesperson for an cause or a personal vision. This is also the reason why the stories are not reported in the first person but are always introduced and summarized by me.

From these stories it emerges that the growth of the movement in the West has been very rapid in recent decades. What are the factors that favored it?
The movement in the West has been nurtured without interruption by the Brothers, who have never stopped emigrating from their countries of origin. To this is added the economic factor that was decisive. The organization has always had significant funding from the countries of the Arabian Gulf and, after the Arab Spring, from Qatar, a support that has allowed it to build mosques and Islamic centers everywhere; to give an Italian example, the UCOII received about 25/30 million, a figure incomparable with that available to other Islamic groups. Finally, the naivety of Western governments also enabled the growth of the Brothers who, in the desire to find an interlocutor in Islamic communities and in the difficulty of understanding such a complex world, often gave this role to those who presented themselves as an interlocutor, but who had more important roles in society, confusing this visibility with real representation.

Wouldn't it be time for the Brotherhood to come out into the open, to push itself into the public debate as a political actor instead of maintaining this secret cult approach?
This is the same challenge that led the people I interviewed in the book to leave the organization. Many of them contest precisely this obscure approach, which in the Arab world has its own reasons but which in the West induces suspicion and proves to be counterproductive, especially when legitimate objectives such as the recognition of certain rights are pursued. Corresponding to this debate within the Brotherhood is the one taking place within the major European governments, excluding Italy. It is a discussion on the behavior to be adopted towards an organization whose dangerousness is understood but which acts for the most part within the limits of the law, and therefore it is not treated as a terrorist organization. On this there is also a clear difference between what happens on either side of the Atlantic. While in Europe, in fact, there is much concern about the impact of the Brotherhood on social cohesion, in American culture it is naturally accepted that certain ethnic groups can and want to live separately at home, maintaining habits and traditions. Issues that are on the front page in France such as the the veil, the time reserved for Muslim women in swimming pools or the construction of a mosque, are less controversial in America because they are taken for granted.

Should the fact that we know so little of such an important reality of Western Islamism frighten us?
Frighten, no, but concern, yes, because I believe that, in every area, in order to act effectively it is first of all necessary to know the reality in which you is moving. And instead, I see that unfortunately many important players on the international scene - intelligence agencies, ministers - take important decisions without adequate knowledge. This is not reassuring because, however it evolves over time, the Brotherhood will long remain a key player in the future of Islam in the West.