European Muslim Brotherhood Women’s Group Among Participants Of EU-Funded Council Of Europe Workshop

On 27th and 28th Sep­tem­ber 2021, the Euro­pean Forum of Mus­lim Women (EFOMW) took part in an online work­shop on anti-Mus­lim hate speech co-orga­nized by the Coun­cil of Europe’s Inclu­sion and Anti-Dis­crim­i­na­tion Divi­sion. Accord­ing to a post on the EFOMW web­site: 

The “WE CAN for human rights speech” work­shop aimed to help activists from a vari­ety of reli­gious and eth­nic back­grounds to devel­op pos­i­tive mes­sages to push back against anti-Mus­lim rhetoric. The work­shop con­sist­ed of craft­ing a human rights-based mes­sage to cre­ate visu­als with the help of a pro­fes­sion­al design­er to com­mu­ni­cate such messages.

Read the rest here. 

The work­shop was orga­nized by the Coun­cil of Europe in coop­er­a­tion with the Forum of Euro­pean Mus­lim Youth and Stu­dent Orga­ni­za­tions, the youth/student arm of the Coun­cil of Euro­pean Mus­lims, one of the main umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent­ing the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) in Europe. The event also received fund­ing from the Euro­pean Union’s Rights, Equal­i­ty, and Cit­i­zen­ship Pro­gram (2014–2020).

As a result of the col­lab­o­ra­tive effort in the Coun­cil of Europe work­shop, on 25 Octo­ber 2021, EFOMW launched a social media cam­paign named “#Let­MeChoose.” The cam­paign visu­als pre­sent­ed a paper doll with a vari­ety of out­fit choic­es, a metaphor for free­dom of choice of dress accord­ing to one’s iden­ti­ty. On its web­site, EFOMW stat­ed that they had received hate com­ments and threat­en­ing mes­sages after launch­ing the cam­paign, say­ing they served as exam­ples of the “con­tin­u­um of vio­lent extrem­ism and hate speech and hate­ful narratives.”

The work­shop was part of the “WE CAN for human rights speech” project, which orga­nizes civ­il soci­ety train­ing ses­sions and is imple­ment­ed by a con­sor­tium of Euro­pean human rights orga­ni­za­tions. One con­sor­tium mem­ber, Ger­man media diver­si­ty NGO Neue Deutsche Medi­en­mach­er*, has been co-head­ed by Daniel Bax, an expert com­mit­tee mem­ber of Ger­man Mus­lim advo­ca­cy net­work CLAIM, which brings under its wings some of the country’s most impor­tant GMB orga­ni­za­tions. In ear­ly Novem­ber 2021, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that a con­tro­ver­sial pro-hijab cam­paign orga­nized by FEMYSO was also part of this same project.

The cur­rent lead­er­ship of the EFOMW, also affil­i­at­ed with CEM, con­tin­ues to show many links to the Euro­pean Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Sev­er­al of EFOMW’s cur­rent and for­mer offi­cers are the wives or rel­a­tives of lead­ing CEM offi­cers, such as for­mer EFOMW Pres­i­dent Noura Jabal­lah (wife of Ahmed Jabal­lah), Nadia Kar­mous (wife of Mohamed Kar­mous), and Hiba Tara­ji (sis­ter of Houai­da Taraji).