“Islamist flags on display at anti-Israel rally held in Stockholm, Sweden on October 15, 2023. The protest was organized by Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international pan-Islamist group that seeks to re-establish the Islamic caliphate and implement sharia throughout the world. At the rally protesters chanted ‘Israelis are nothing but dogs of the West.’” (Image from Islamism.news.)
[Note: December 5, 2023— I have added selected text from the original article.]
Most of the major Muslim groups across Europe refused to condemn the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, while some actually celebrated them and many others only condemned Israel’s response instead.
Following is the introductory text from an article on the website “Focus on Western Islamism” entitled “European Islamists Ignore — or Celebrate — Hamas’s October 7 Massacre,” by Soeren Kern. The article details the public responses of Islamist groups in the EU in general, as well as responses specifically in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
[Following is SELECTED TEXT from the article. See the actual article for the full text and supporting links.]
INTRODUCTION
Islamists in Europe have overwhelmingly come out in support of Hamas’s October 7 massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis. That support has been expressed in different ways: explicitly approving of Hamas’s murder, rape and abduction of Israeli civilians; justifying the crimes by blaming Israel; and by remaining silent and refusing to condemn Hamas publicly.
Some Islamist groups, especially Muslim umbrella groups that benefit from public funding and are official interlocutors between Muslim communities and European governments, have flatly refused to distance themselves from Hamas and resorted to moral equivalency by staking out equidistant positions between the aggressor and the attacked. Others have spread antisemitic propaganda by attempting to relativize or “contextualize” Hamas’s murderous rampage as a response to Israel’s existence. Still others have issued carefully contrived and often anodyne statements that use linguistic gymnastics to claim they have condemned Hamas when they have not.
Several Islamists have expressed anger that they are being asked to publicly condemn Hamas and the antisemitism that is raging across Europe; they have described such demands as “Islamophobia.” Many have been incapable of condemning antisemitism without also referring to Muslims as victims of racism.
Prominent Islamists, especially in France and Germany, have portrayed themselves before European audiences as sympathetic to Jews and Israel, while sending contrary messages to Muslim audiences in Arabic and Turkish.
Here is a country-by-country roundup of the responses Islamists have offered since Hamas’s October 7 attack. FWI will add to this summary in the weeks ahead.
DENMARK
The Islamic Society in Denmark (Dansk Islamisk Trossamfund), an Islamist group that was instrumental in inciting worldwide protests during the 2005 Danish Cartoon controversy, called on the estimated 200,000 Muslims in Denmark to protest Israeli military action against Hamas. Muslims in Denmark should “show Denmark that we stand with Palestine against oppression.” In another statement, the group justified the Hamas massacre by blaming “incursions by Israeli security forces, including in the al-Aqsa mosque.” It called on the “international community” to force Israel to “end the violence” and to “strengthen peacekeepers.”
The Muslim Joint Council (Muslimernes Fællesråd, MFR), the largest multi-ethnic Muslim umbrella group, with 40,000 members, justified Hamas’s massacre of Israelis as “the result ongoing harassment, brutality and massacres that the Palestinian people have faced in the past 70 years.” The group referred to Israel as an “apartheid state” and called for “the immediate end of all global political support for Israel and for the Israeli army to stop the ongoing brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
Neither the Danish Islamic Council (Dansk Islamisk Råd), a Muslim Brotherhood-linked umbrella organization that represents Sunni Muslims in Denmark, nor the associated Grand Mosque of Copenhagen (Hamad Bin Khalifa Civilization Center), publicly condemned the Hamas massacre of Israelis.
FRANCE
In France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim population, the French Islam Forum (Forum de l’Islam de France, FORIF), a newly launched Muslim “dialogue forum” established by the French government to fight Islamism and promote an Islam “faithful to the values of the Republic,” has had nothing to say about Hamas’s massacre of Israelis.
[The French Council for the Muslim Faith (Conseil français du culte musulman, CFCM) issued a statement suggesting] that Israel was responsible for the violence against its citizens because of the security measures it imposed on Gaza. It declared that “abuses committed by both sides” must be condemned “with the same force.” The CFCM also complained about global support for the Jewish state. “Palestinian civilians do not benefit from this same solidarity and do not have this same security,” it claimed.
On November 1, the CFCM denounced an alleged “hierarchy between civilian victims” that “attempts to justify [Israeli] crimes committed against [Palestinian] civilians, including children.”
On November 8, the CFCM condemned the “increase in Islamophobic and antisemitic acts and remarks.” It complained of an “uninhibited outpouring of hatred of Muslims on social media and in mass media.” It criticized a nationwide protest against antisemitism “which has the exclusive objective of denouncing antisemitism without a word on Islamophobia” and can be “interpreted by Islamophobes as a sign of impunity.”
On November 12, the CFCM asserted that the “French far right is doing everything it can to import the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into France, so that the Jews of France, its former target, are torn apart with its new target, the Muslims of France.” It added, falsely: “With all due respect to the antisemites of yesterday and today, antisemitism is prohibited by the founding texts of Islam. The antisemites of yesterday and today do not read the Quran.”
On November 16, the CFCM issued a lengthy statement complaining about the “humane media treatment” toward Israeli victims and hostages of Hamas’s October 7 attack, and a “completely different media treatment” experienced by Palestinians. It claimed that Gazans were being “dehumanized” because they are often referred to as “human shields,” a “metaphor that carries a scandalous message.” According to the CFCM, Palestinians “are therefore first defined by an object of war before being human,” and the “dehumanization of a people has always been a prerequisite for the justification of the worst atrocities against them.”
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[The Union of Islamic Organizations in France, which changed its name to Muslims of France (Musulmans de France, MF)], which represents more than 280 mosques in France, claimed that the conflict in Gaza has nothing to do with Islam. “We refuse a religious reading of this political conflict,” it said. In another statement, it repeated that “we insist that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is not religious in nature.” In fact, the Hamas Charter, which calls for the complete annihilation of Israel, is based on the Islamic doctrine of jihad and the concept that once land is Muslim, that land is always Muslim.
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Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron failed to attend a large pro-Israel demonstration in Paris on November 12. More than 100,000 people attended the march, which protested rising antisemitism in France. He justified his absence by saying that the president’s role is to “preserve the unity of our country” and that “protecting French people of Jewish faith” could imply “pillorying those of Muslim faith.”
Bergeaud-Blackler, the anthropologist, noted, “as far back as I can remember, the fight against antisemitism has never been against Muslims. This propaganda, a pure product of the Muslim Brotherhood, has reached the top echelons of the French government. This is very worrying.”
On November 14, the French weekly news magazine L’Express revealed that Macron had solicited advice from Yassine Belattar, a controversial Franco-Moroccan comedian who is widely believed to be close to the Muslim Brotherhood. Belattar reportedly warned Macron that if he makes the “irreparable” error of attending the antisemitism protest, he would “give the neighborhoods reason to burst into flames.” He was referring to the Muslim riots that engulfed France in June and July 2023.
GERMANY
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One of the most influential Islamist groups in Germany is the Islamic Community Millî Görüş (Islamische Gemeinschaft Milli Görüş, IGMG), a neo-Ottoman political and religious movement that is close to both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Turkish government. Millî Görüş (National Vision), which rejects secular Western values, has been outspoken in its support for Hamas. The chairman of Millî Görüş, Kemal Ergün, justified the terrorist group’s actions by blaming Israeli “interventions” on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
On November 13, Ergün, in an interview with Camia Haber, a Cologne-based Turkish-language media outlet for Turks living in Germany, complained about the “constant expectation of a statement from Islamic organizations” condemning Hamas and antisemitism, and the “constant expectation of Muslims, from workplaces to schools, to declare a pure stance” vis-à-vis Jews. “It is almost like a manifesto is expected.”
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German-Turkish Islam expert Murat Kayman noted that “even on November 9” Islamist groups “failed to stand up for Jews in Germany without addressing anti-Muslim racism.” He said that Islamists do not see antisemitism as a “problem in itself,” but only as a “backdrop for self-referential communication.” They are interested in “portraying themselves as victims” and “drawing attention to their own concerns.” This is “not an expression of genuine concern for the security of Jewish life in Germany” but rather the “instrumentalization of antisemitism as a communicative crutch.”
The Muslim Coordination Council (Koordinationsrat der Muslime, KRM), an umbrella group that represents six Islamist groups, issued a statement that blamed both Israel and Hamas for the violence. Reinhard Bütikofer, a German lawmaker and Member of the European Parliament, criticized the KRM: “How can you trust people who are unwilling to call a spade a spade?”
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The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Germany (Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat Deutschland), which claims to promote a “peaceful and compassionate” version of Islam, issued a statement in which it failed to mention Hamas by name and instead claimed that Israel’s blockade of Gaza “is disproportionate and violates international law.”
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Not one of Germany’s main Muslim umbrella groups agreed to attend a special hearing at the German Parliament on October 17, when lawmakers asked them to issue a joint statement condemning Hamas.
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Turkish influence is clearly at play. German-Turkish Islam expert Eren Güvercin noted that many Muslim associations in Germany are reluctant to publicly criticize Hamas because of fear of retribution from the Turkish government. “As a critical German-Muslim voice, you end up in the crosshairs of AKP [Türkiye’s ruling party] if you describe Hamas as a terrorist organization,” he wrote. “The anti-Jewish agitation and unconditional solidarity with Hamas terrorists has reached such an extent that not even a single critical Muslim voice is tolerated.” Güvercin added that spies for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Germany are “reporting the commentary in Germany to Ankara in ‘press reviews.’”
Türkiye is undoubtedly fomenting hostility toward Israel in German society. The Turkish government’s Directorate for Religious Affairs (known in Turkish as Diyanet) controls nearly 1,000 mosques in Germany. In an October 20 speech, Diyanet chief Ali Erbaş asked “Allah” to “have mercy on our Palestinian martyrs who died under the oppression of Israel.” He accused Israel of “perpetrating the greatest atrocities witnessed in human history in Palestine, Gaza” and alleged that the Jewish state was committing a “great crime against humanity in front of the eyes of the whole world.”
Diyanet controls the Cologne-based Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), one of the largest Islamist organizations in Germany. It is frequently referred to as an “arm” of the Turkish state. Every week, Diyanet circulates sermons that are recommended to be delivered in DITIB mosques during Friday prayer services.
On October 13, a Diyanet sermon described Israel as a “rusty dagger stuck in the heart of Islamic geography” and justified Hamas’s massacre by accusing Israel of “damaging the reputation of Jerusalem” and “violating the sanctity” of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Another Diyanet sermon, recommended for delivery in German mosques on Friday, October 20, claimed that “one of the greatest atrocities in human history is taking place today in Palestine, Gaza.” It added that Israel was “brutally murdering innocent people, including babies, children, women and the elderly.” Apparently alluding to Palestinians in Gaza, Diyanet called on “all of humanity to stand with the oppressed.”
GREECE
The Muslim Association of Greece, which claims to represent 300,000 Muslims in the country, has not issued a public condemnation of Hamas, but its leader, Naim El Ghandour, has posted copious amounts of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood propaganda on social media. In a Facebook post, he “salutes the Palestinian uprising against the terrorist state of Israel.” He has organized anti-Israel events in Athens, which is home to a large Palestinian community.
IRELAND
The Islamic Foundation of Ireland, the official representative of the estimated 85,000 Muslims in Ireland, failed to condemn Hamas’s massacre of Israelis, but in an October 18 statement, issued together with more than two dozen Islamic associations in the country, it “strongly and unequivocally” condemned “the Israeli onslaught against the people of Palestine and the heinous assault carried out on the Al-Ahly Arab Hospital in Gaza.” The deadly explosion at the hospital was caused by a Gazan — not Israeli — missile.
The Islamic Foundation of Ireland also criticized the “unconditional support” the United States has given Israel and the “support or silence of many European countries” which allows “the occupying forces in Palestine to perpetrate such atrocities.”
ITALY
The Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy (L’Unione delle Comunità Islamiche in Italia, UCOII), one of the largest Muslim umbrella groups in Italy and one that has been accused of being tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, has not condemned Hamas. In a television interview, UCOII president Yassine Lafram did criticize Hamas, but he blamed Israel for provoking the massacre.
On October 31, UCOII called for Israel to end its “genocide” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and asked Allah to “give the Palestinian people strength to continue existing.” On November 15, it condemned the “Islamophobic drift” on Italian television.
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SPAIN
The main Islamic organizations in Spain have been silent about Hamas’ massacre of Jews and its call for global jihad. Neither the Islamic Commission of Spain (Comisión Islámica de España, CIE), the sole interlocutor between Muslims and the Spanish government, nor its two constituent organizations, the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain (Unión de Comunidades Islámicas de España, UCIDE), the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities (Federación Española de Entidades Religiosas Islámicas, FEERI), have condemned Hamas. “Their silence is complicit,” said Spanish lawmaker Alberto Tarradas Paneque.
On November 7, UCIDE, which represents more than 800 mosques in Spain, accused Israel of “apartheid,” “state terrorism” and “atrocious oppression.” The statement — “Solidarity with Gaza” — falsely blamed Israel for violating “international legality” and “international humanitarian law” and called on the “international community” to force the Jewish state to declare “an immediate, lasting and sustained humanitarian truce leading to the cessation of hostilities.” UCIDE’s statement asserted that “any fair and upright person would position themselves in defense of the oppressed and compliance with international legality.”
UCIDE’s statement was signed by its Islamist president, 75-year-old Syria-born Aiman Adlbi, who was arrested in March 2021 for allegedly financing al-Qaeda militias in Syria through donations to a Turkish NGO called Al Bashaer Humanitarian Organization. A classified police report leaked to the Spanish newspaper El País noted that Adlbi “recommends Salafi and Wahhabi authors, of the most radical currents of Islam, to his students at the Central Mosque of Madrid.” It warned of “possible acts linked to religious fanaticism.” UCIDE’s treasurer, 61-year-old Syria-born Mohamed Hatem Rohaibani, has also been investigated for allegedly belonging to jihadist networks.
On November 15, UCIDE’s delegate to the western Spanish region of Extremadura, 60-year-old Gaza-born Adel Najjar, who is the imam of the Mosque of Badajoz (Mezquita de Badajoz), was arrested for “crimes related to jihadism” after Spanish anti-terrorism police raided his house and mosque. Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Najjar has repeatedly accused Israel of committing “genocide” and “carnage against a civilian population.”
SWEDEN
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The Vision Party (Visionpartiet), another Islamist party that was created by disaffected former members of the Nuance Party, is equally anti-Israel. Party Secretary Adel Sadat justified Hamas’s massacre of Israelis because of the Israeli occupation. “Even a cat forced into a corner will start scratching and fighting for its life,” he wrote. Sadat described as a “terrorist state” that is committing “generational genocide” of the Palestinians.
On November 9, the Vision Party called for international sanctions against Israel “for their violence and war crimes against Palestinian civilians.” It claimed that “what Israel is doing in Gaza is not self-defense but a genocide!” The party proposed the interdiction of “all military deliveries to Israel from the USA that passes via EU countries.”
On October 24, Vision Party Chairman Sead Busuladzic, a Swede of Bosnian origin, complained about “an intensive campaign going on to paint black the entire Palestinian freedom movement and link all its aspects/slogans/frames with antisemitism.” In response, the party launched its own campaign for Palestine: “Supporting Palestine is NOT antisemitism!”
On October 28, Vision Party Secretary Adel Sadat, angry about the Swedish government’s support for Israel, complained about “the Zionist lobby that is raging in Sweden” and added: “You talk about the takeover of Sweden and Swedish values by Muslims and Islam but completely ignore the Zionist infection in Sweden on all levels.”
In the center of Stockholm, representatives of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international pan-Islamist group that seeks to re-establish the Islamic caliphate and implement sharia globally, called for jihad against Israel and the West. During an October 15 rally at Odenplan, a large plaza in central Stockholm, Islamists repeated chants, including: “This fight is between Muslims and the rest of the world;” “Liberation from Western domination, liberation from the Western ruler;” and “Israelis are nothing but dogs of the West.” On October 10, Hizb ut-Tahrir held a rally at Medborgarplatsen in Stockholm during which Islamists called for death to the Jews and for full support for Hamas.
SWITZERLAND
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[A board member of the The Federation of Islamic Umbrella Organizations in Switzerland (Föderation islamischer Dachorganisationen der Schweiz, FIDS) Fathima Ifthikar] complained that Muslims were being asked to condemn Hamas and the rising tide of antisemitism in Switzerland. “This leaves a bad taste in our mouths: Why do we have to justify ourselves? When Christians cause mischief, I do not expect my fellow Christians to distance themselves.”
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The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (Islamische Zentralrat Schweiz, IZRS), a Qatari-funded Salafist group whose leaders have been surveilled by Swiss intelligence agencies, has organized pro-Hamas demonstrations in Bern. The group’s leader, Nicolas Blancho, a Swiss convert to Islam, continues to incite hatred and violence against Jews and the Jewish state.