German media is reporting that the local government has rejected plans for construction of a 4800 square meter Berlin mosque and culture complex sponsored by an Islamic association linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. As a previous post reported, the project is backed by an Islamic association known as Inssan whose earlier plans for the construction of a facility twice the size were rejected after running into trouble in 2004 when German media revealed that the property was actually purchased on behalf of the European Trust by Ibrahim El-Zayat, the leader of the Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland (IGD). Both the European Trust and the IGD are part of the Muslim Brotherhood network in Europe. The 2.9 million Euro project, said by Inssan to be financed one-third by German donations and the remainder from “sponsors” in Arab countries including the ruler of Sharjah, the UAE emirate, and the Emir of Qatar. The ruling families of the Gulf states are known in the past to have financed numerous Muslim Brotherhood projects around the world. Although the German media is reporting that the project was rejected due to “zoning” concerns, sources inside Germany say that a local neighborhood group mounted a sustained effort to kill the proposal and provided government officials with information about Insann’s ties to the German Muslim Brotherhood as well as its sponsorship of a seminar given by Zaghoul Al-Naggar, an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood figure known for his anti-Semitic writings. The same sources state that Inssan attempted to deny its connections to the German Muslim Brotherhood but that those connections were confirmed by the German Interior Ministry.