5th Sep 2025
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, in his main speech at Reforms annual conference on 5th September has said that his party will recognise ban the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation and proscribe (ban) the organisation when elected, saying
“And we will stop dangerous organisations with links to terrorism operating in our country, quite why we have been so gutless about this, both Conservative and Labour, I do not know … All across the Middle East, countries have banned and proscribed the Muslim Brotherhood as a dangerous organisation. We will do the very same.”
The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Cairo in 1928, is one of the world’s largest and best-known political pro-Islam groups and whilst it has long maintained that it is a peaceful organisation that wishes to participate in politics democratically, the fact is that is considered a major threat by many governments in the Middle East and North Africa and in, for example, banned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE.
The 2014 government commissioned a review into the Muslim Brotherhood, which was conducted by John Jenkins, the UK’s then-ambassador to Saudi Arabia. It suggested that the organisation had served as a “rite of passage” for violent militants and was incompatible with British values
A ban on the Brotherhood in Britain would strengthen Britain’s counter-terrorism efforts but when the UAE banned the Muslim Brotherhood, although this would require many linked organisations also to be banned – the UAE identified 11 affiliated individuals taffiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), (also named by former Communities Secretary Michael Gove MP as the UK affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood and identified in 2015 within an official government review as “dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood”. In reality, there are dozens, if not hundreds of organisations which are in some way part of the MB movement, from registered companies and charities, to think tanks, academic centres, religious associations, sports clubs, and more. May have already been investigated by the Charity Commission for extremism, for questionable charitable activities or links to Muslim Brotherhood umbrella groups like the Union of Good (UoG), MEND and Cage. MEND is a campaign group focused on increasing political engagement among British Muslims and opposing what it sees as discriminatory policies, while Cage emerged as an advocacy group against the “War on Terror” and campaigns against the treatment of detainees.
Other are likely to try to conceal any connection to the MB, so much so that their employees and volunteers may not be aware of the true political nature of their organisations.
The MB heirarchy hold multiple positions in these organisations simultaneously, and often try to hide their connection by appointing relatives, from siblings to sons and daughters, to similar positions within the ecosystem and by subtly changing the spelling of a name or include different middle names to make it harder to make the connection. MB also provide local services, such as counselling or sports instruction which whilst not directly promulgating MB ideas, provides a version promoting a pure Islamist view and denigrating any traces of liberal values as well as non-Islamic secular values.
This constellation of organisations helps the MB to sustain itself financially with funding from entirely legitimate businesses operated by MB members meaning that if one funding source were to dry up – such as real estate, foreign state support or charitable giving (zakat), the MB would remain intact.
The MB, MAG and UoG have been heavily involved in multiple “mega-mosque” building projects – which typically contain a creche, a mortuary and everything from schools and libraries to gyms and swimming pools, all with the objective of isolating the local Muslim population and to decrease their interaction with the state and social services as well as reliance on external non-Muslim parties. The MB project seeks:
i) to embed their idealogues further into society,
ii) to attempt to cut Muslims off spiritually, intellectually and culturally from the perceived surrounding corruption of secular, Western societies;
iii) to promoting leverage influence on local, regional and national level including membership in advisory boards, business councils, interfaith meetings. mayors, councillors etc.,
….all with the intention of advancing the MB cause, and creating a paternalistic attitude towards the wider Muslim population, to provide Muslims in their spheres of influence with “cradle to the grave”.
“The Muslim ideology must be a defined small society within the larger society [the West], otherwise [Muslims] will melt in it like salt in water.”
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood until 2022.
The proposed Reform policy would likely lead to a serious clampdown on British Muslim civil society organisations, since previous governments have attempted to tie major Muslim groups to Islamism and indeed in March 2024, Conservative communities secretary, Michael Gove, announced a contentious non-statutory definition of extremism as “the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance”.