Govt to publish 'principal findings' from Muslim Brotherhood review next month

The Financial Times today discloses that the Government is to publish only summary findings from its review into the Muslim Brotherhood amidst concerns that the full report will antagonise Middle Eastern countries who had hoped the report would be more damning of the MB.

Ian Black in The Guardian last week wrote that the report was languishing on a shelf as Whitehall officials and Ministers sought to avert a crisis in relations with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, two countries that have taken a hardline approach to the MB by proscribing it and a number of linked associations.

The FT claims the Government will publish “principal findings” in the coming weeks, six months later than the projected 2014 deadline.

Furthermore, the paper notes, “According to those who have seen the British report, it will not offer policy prescriptions, but instead seek to spell out a network of linked organisations, some of which are implicated in extremist activity. Ministers will then have to decide what to do about each of these groups, and are likely to launch further reviews into other organisations when the report is published.”

The FT observes that “The situation has been further complicated by the UAE’s decision to proscribe not only the Muslim Brotherhood but also a raft of other organisations, including the Muslim Association of Britain. The MAB has since contacted the Foreign Office to enlist its help in fighting against the ban.”

The targeting of associations purportedly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood mirrors the approach taken by the UAE which, in a terror list last year, designated the Muslim Association of Britain, Cordoba Foundation, Islamic Relief and US based advocacy organisation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as ‘terrorist’ groups.

Moreover, the report’s singling out of linked organisations “implicated in extremist activity” raises questions about the definition of ‘extremist activity’ given, for example, claims to proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir despite the absence of legal evidence supporting proscription and explicitly political motives for doing so.

But as commentary on the Government’s review of the MB has asserted from the outset, this was an exercise in political expediency.