Vice-Chair of Belgian Anti-Racism NGO with Muslim Brotherhood Ties Meets with Barack Obama

The Euro­pean Net­work Against Racism (ENAR), a Bel­gian anti-racism NGO with Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood ties, is report­ing that on 11 June 2022, its Vice-Chair Ami­irah Saleh-Hod­din met with for­mer US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma as part of the 2022 Copen­hagen Democ­ra­cy Sum­mit. Accord­ing to a post on the ENAR website:

As Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was invit­ed to speak at this year’s Copen­hagen Democ­ra­cy Sum­mit, he decid­ed to use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to also bring the program’s 2020 and 2022 Euro­pean Lead­ers cohorts togeth­er and meet in per­son for the first time. ENAR Vice-Chair Ami­irah Saleh-Hod­din was able to share her expe­ri­ence work­ing on antiracism with ENAR.

Read the rest here.

Accord­ing to his web­site, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma par­tic­i­pat­ed in an inter­ac­tive work­shop with near­ly 60 Oba­ma Foun­da­tion Lead­ers from across Europe, work­ing out solu­tions to strength­en democ­ra­cy and ideas for “high impact advance­ments.” Accord­ing to ENAR, par­tic­i­pants dis­cussed top­ics includ­ing diver­si­ty, pop­ulism, dis­in­for­ma­tion, strength­en­ing mul­ti­eth­nic democ­ra­cy, and big tech. ENAR empha­sized that Saleh-Hod­din had used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ensure crit­i­cal under­stand­ings of “struc­tur­al and insti­tu­tion­al racism” and anti-racism remained on the agen­da, under­lin­ing the crit­i­cal need for an ‘inter­sec­tion­al per­spec­tive’ to be applied to these issues.

“Struc­tur­al racism” is a term gen­er­al­ly used to describe insti­tu­tion­al­ized process­es and behav­iors that amount to dis­crim­i­na­tion through unwit­ting prej­u­dice and racist stereo­typ­ing. “Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty” is a term gen­er­al­ly used to describe the ways in which sys­tems of inequal­i­ty based on gen­der, race, eth­nic­i­ty, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, gen­der iden­ti­ty, dis­abil­i­ty, class, and oth­er forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion are said to “inter­sect” to cre­ate unique dynam­ics and effects. Both terms are rou­tine­ly used on the Left, and ENAR, among oth­er groups tied to the GMB, has increas­ing­ly adopt­ed this lan­guage. Rel­e­vant Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ing has included:

• In Octo­ber 2020, we report­ed that ENAR was one of sev­er­al groups tied to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) that called on EU mem­ber states and insti­tu­tions to use the COVID epi­dem­ic as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to “tack­le the struc­tur­al man­i­fes­ta­tions of Islam­o­pho­bia by main­stream­ing it in key pol­i­cy areas.

• In March 2021, we report­ed on an ENAR report on anti-ter­ror­ism leg­is­la­tion whose for­ward said it would “high­light how struc­tur­al racism can man­i­fest in Europe through pol­i­cy-mak­ing devel­oped under the cov­er of secu­ri­tis­ing Europe.”

• In June 2022. we report­ed on an ENAR post that said the group had attend­ed a Euro­pean Com­mis­sion event aimed at edu­cat­ing ENAR mem­bers about “Equal­i­ty Data col­lec­tion, recog­ni­tion of struc­tur­al racism, and intersectionality.”

ENAR is an asso­ci­a­tion of over 150 NGOs describ­ing itself as “the voice of the anti-racist move­ment in Europe,” and has met with high-lev­el EU offi­cials, includ­ing the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Coor­di­na­tor on Com­bat­ing Anti-Mus­lim Hatred. For­mer ENAR Direc­tor Michaël Priv­ot, who in 2008 open­ly acknowl­edged that he was a mem­ber of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, has served in lead­ing posi­tions in sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions tied to the GMB, includ­ing as a  board mem­ber of FEMYSO. In 2019, ENAR was one of 21 sig­na­to­ries to an open let­ter pub­lished by a self-described “infor­mal Euro­pean coali­tion against Islam­o­pho­bia,” which was com­prised main­ly of orga­ni­za­tions and one indi­vid­ual tied to the GMB in Europe.

The Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Dai­ly Watch, our pre­de­ces­sor pub­li­ca­tion, report­ed exten­sive­ly on the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion and its close ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the US.