On Thursday 8 October, the European Parliament voted on a resolution calling for a Union strategy against Islamist entryism and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood network. MEP Sophie Wilmès fully supports this ambition: “for several years, our security and intelligence services in Belgium have been documenting the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood and warning us about it. In France too, the report from the Ministry of the Interior published last year sounds the alarm. These warnings must be taken very seriously. We are not talking about terrorism here, but about a strategy of establishment and influence conducted by Islamist networks that operate under cover to sway public decisions and our democratic processes.
The ultimate goal is well known: to impose a model of society based on their own radical interpretation of religious precepts, which they place above civil law and individual freedoms. This political project clashes head-on with our values in Europe. And the whole of society is affected.
We are talking about equality between women and men, women's rights, freedom of expression, freedom to believe or not, the rights of LGBTQI+ people, and so on. It is these freedoms that are at stake.”
Together with MR MEPs, Sophie Wilmès therefore voted in favour of the text originally proposed by the EPP. Sophie Wilmès explains: “Parliament's position is firm because it responds to the facts on the ground. The Renew group acted here as the guarantor of nuance, for example by explicitly stating in the text the difference between Islam as a religion and Islamism. I also note that, of all the groups, Renew managed to get the most amendments adopted. Fortunately so, because from the outset S&D and the Greens showed a sorely lacking sense of courage. Socialists and Greens were conspicuously absent on this issue.
They tabled no text whatsoever and refused any negotiation on a joint resolution. Few of their members even took part in the debate. The amendments they finally tabled clearly sought to downplay the threat, reducing the issue to mere racism and Islamophobia. We should have been able to seek common ground between democratic forces. That was our wish, but they refused it. Their blindness on this issue is total. I hope it is not deliberate as well.”
Sophie Wilmès also welcomed the rejection of the most problematic amendments from the far right and far left: “it wasn't a given, and yet the vast majority of amendments from the far right were rejected, including the most inflammatory, full of amalgamations or conceptual confusion. Of course, we voted against all of them. As for the far left, what I read in the amendments tabled by The Left, the group in which the PTB and La France Insoumise sit, left me stunned. It's very simple: for them, the entryism and interference of the Muslim Brotherhood is a pure invention, a plot to stigmatise Muslims, or even strip them of their rights. Some amendments bordered on insulting our intelligence services. This level of complicity with radical Islamism is not just serious, it is also fundamentally dangerous for our democracy. Thankfully, none of them was adopted.”
Although the Renew Europe group's resolution was ultimately not put to a vote for procedural reasons, and some proposals are not reflected in the final text, Sophie Wilmès believes this work was not in vain. It helped establish a clear position and a list of priorities for liberals: “for this European strategy to be solid, we have several demands. First of all, we need to equip ourselves, at European level, with a common reference methodology to identify networks and assess the threat. That's the basis for everything. Without a shared understanding of the phenomenon, we cannot act effectively. Secondly, we want to be able to better track European funding, transparently, right through to the final beneficiaries. This matters because organisations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood rely on public subsidies. We also want better control over who has access to our institutions, including Parliament. This involves the Transparency Register. In addition, there is a need to strengthen police cooperation, develop recommendations on the dissolution of certain associations with proven links to religious entryism, and create a European list of hate preachers, as a basis for banning entry to our territory. Some of these demands are reflected in the text voted today. Our work to turn this set of very concrete measures into reality has, of course, only just begun.”