In a speech to the annual FIOE General Assembly, the FIOE President asserted that “lobbies that serve foreign agendas mostly connected to the Middle East” have tried to prevent the European Union from dealing with FIOE but have so far failed. This would appear to be an allusion to a Jewish effort to block FIOE at the EU level. The global Muslim Brotherhood universally refers to an assortment of plots and conspiracies directed toward Muslims usually referring to unidentified “special interests” and sometimes specifically to the Jewish community. As a recent post discussed, Youssef Qaradawi, putative leader of the global Brotherhood, blamed “Zionism” for the Danish cartoon controversy. Qaradawi is the head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, a central organization of FIOE. FIOE itself blamed the republication of the Danish cartoons on unidentified “forces of extremism.”
FIOE has also announced that it has established a “specialized organization” to monitor prejudice against European Muslims. According to the announcement:
The Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe announced the establishment of a specialized organization for monitoring and recording any racial practices that Muslims of Europe might be exposed to, and issuing periodic statements on the Muslim status in the continent. The President of the Federation Mr.Chakib Bin Makhlouf told Al Jazeera.net that the incident of the murder of the Egyptian Marwa Al Sherbiny in Germany in July of this year, accelerated the establishment of the afore-mentioned organization, whose branches will spread all across Europe. It will also study the effect of the extreme right wing policies on the wave of hatred against Muslims.
A report on FIOE by the NEFA Foundation describes the organization as follows:
The Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) claims to be an independent organization representing the interests of Muslims in Europe. In reality, the FIOE is an umbrella group that comprises the global Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. Strong links connect FIOE’s leadership central institutions and member organizations to the Brotherhood, as well as to Saudi Arabia. Funding for the FIOE is derived largely from Gulf sources, including some of the ruling families of the United Arab Emirates. The FIOE has strong ties to Hamas and Hamas fund-raising organizations, and some FIOE member organizations show evidence of links with Al-Qaida. The FIOE recently opened a headquarters office in Brussels and has had some success in positioning itself as a “dialog partner” for the EU and other important institutions.