EDITOR’S NOTICE: Farewell to the GMBDW- An Epitaph

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It has been a long time coming but we are both sad and excited to announce that as of today, the GMBDW will no longer be posting new material. We first posted on June 15, 2007 under the original name the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report and at the time had no idea what this publication would become or how long it would last, having started more or less as an informal means to disseminate open-source intelligence on the Global Muslim Brotherhood to a few interested parties. Since then we believe the GMBDW has been instrumental in advancing the understanding that the Muslim Brotherhood today is a global network whose scope and importance extend far beyond the Egyptian “mother organization.” We also could not have foretold that the GMBDW would have been:

  • Instrumental in forcing the resignation of Mazen Asbahi, a key Obama campaign advisor over his Global Muslim Brotherhood ties.
  • First to expose the Global Muslim Brotherhood ties and deceptions of Rashad Hussain, a key Obama White House official.
  • First to have reported on the Islamist family ties of Huma Abedin, a key aid to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
  • First to have reported on Gehad El-Haddad, an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader that worked for the Clinton Foundation in Cairo.
  • Cited by the UK Times newspaper for assisting into an investigation into Muslim Brotherhood finances in the UK.
  • Credited by the UK Telegraph for a report exposing Qatar Charity funding of a mosque project with extremist ties.

We were certainly not the largest publication by readership reporting on the Brotherhood but we like to think that it was our balanced, non-partisan, evidence-based approach that separated us from the other, shriller voices in this arena. We also know that we were widely read by governments and security agencies around the world and that Internet searches often reveal that the GMBDW has been the only source in a wide variety of areas concerning the GMB.

Times have changed however and when we began our work on the GMB, the threat of terrorism was the overwhelmingly dominant lens through which everything Brotherhood was viewed. While that threat remains, we have always believed that such a focus came to interfere with understanding the true dangers of the GMB which center on the impact of this network on the social and political life of the Western host countries. Also, over time rational discussion on the GMB has become increasingly impossible, particularly in the US where the shrill voices of the US rightwing have come to dominate the topic. As a result, the discussion is currently frozen between those rightwing actors and their hysterical claims and those on the other side of the political spectrum who have seemly shut their ears to acknowledging any truth to the reality that the GMB does represent a threat to Western democracies. Accordingly, the GMBDW no longer believes that any real progress can be made in addressing this threat as long as the current political polarization continues and as long as the nature of that threat is incorrectly framed. (Perhaps it is fitting that our final post centered on the further legitimization of the GMB by Presidential candidate Joe Biden, something that will no doubt raise the polarization over this issue to new heights in the event that he becomes US President.)

So, as announced in August, the GMBDW is being replaced by a new publication titled the Global Influence Operations Report (GIOR) dedicated to monitoring the threat of influence operations within the Western democracies. The rationale for the focus on influence operations was extensively discussed in that announcement but we would like to reiterate that we consider the rise of state-sponsored and transnational influence, of which the GMB is but one of multiple actors, to be the most profound threat facing the West as it seeks to counter the flood of disinformation that is making rational discussion of public policy increasingly difficult if not impossible. GMBDW readers should rest assured that the new publication will continue to monitor the Global Muslim Brotherhood but in this new context and focusing on instances where the GMB has succeeded or is attempting to gain influence within western democracies. We also hope that new readers of the GIOR may come to consider the Global Muslim Brotherhood in a new light even though they may come to the publication out of other concerns. The GMBDW will remain live as a historical archive for as long as possible and the GIOR will have a link to GMBDW searches on its page dedicated to Islamist influence networks.

The GMBDW editors would like to thank all of our readers for giving us their attention over the last 13 year and it has been our privilege to serve you as the world’s only publication focusing solely on the daily activities of the Global Muslim Brotherhood. We hope that many of you will move over to the GIOR and find it as or even more useful in today’s political climate than you did the older publication.

See the Global Influence Operations Report here.

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