German Court Rejects Palestinian's Citizenship Application Because of Muslim Brotherhood Support

European countries are taking a more aggressive approach to confronting Islamic extremist groups that support violence and undermine Western constitutional norms in favor of sharia.

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The most recent example comes from Germany, where an administrative court ruled against the citizenship application of a Palestinian man who had lived in the country for 20 years, saying that his support for the Muslim Brotherhood stood in opposition to the German political order.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

A court in the German state of Hesse dismissed a legal suit on Tuesday from a 39-year-old Palestinian seeking German citizenship, on the grounds that he attended pro-Muslim Brotherhood seminars and represents a threat to the country’s democracy.

The administrative court said that the Palestinian “supports attempts against the free, democratic order” because of his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Germany’s intelligence agencies – the rough equivalent to the Shin Bet – monitor the Muslim Brotherhood because the Islamic organization is viewed as a threat to Germany’s constitutional democracy, according to intelligence reports in the Federal Republic. “The Muslim Brotherhood and their allied organizations pursue on the whole anti-constitutional efforts,” wrote the court in Hesse.

Such action has precedent even in the U.S.

In May 2005, federal prosecutors argued against the asylum application of Syrian Muslim Brotherhood member Ahmed Barodi, who before his deportation lived in Arlington, Texas. Barodi admitted when entering the country that he had attended a 21-day “Guerilla Warfare training camp” in Iraq, sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood. He had also been previously arrested in Saudi Arabia for smuggling false passports for Muslim Brotherhood members.

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Another Dallas-area man, Nabil Sadoun, a former national board member of the Council on America-Islamic Relations (CAIR), fled the country and abandoned his immigration appeals after federal prosecutors said in their motion for deportation that Sadoun had been involved with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

German authorities have been warning of the threat from political Islamist movements, the largest of which is the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Munich-based Islamic Community of Germany (IGD) is the most prominent Arab Sunni Islamist group in the country. It has also been identified as the largest group of Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

In 1999, the Bavarian Office of the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz) said in an annual report that:

Many members and functionaries of the IGD and of the Islamic centers are close to the Muslim Brotherhood and their goals. To support the Jihad, collections were organized several times. The efforts of Pakistan to be an Islamic country with nuclear weapons were mentioned positively. The demand for militancy was especially recognized in the call for Jihad to liberate Jerusalem. This confirms the convictions of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has voiced its opposition against a peace agreement between Arabs and Jews at the end of 1998.

The same office warned in 2010 that “the political system aspired to by the Muslim Brotherhood shows distinct characteristics of a totalitarian system that neither guarantees the sovereignty of the people nor the principles of freedom and equality of man.”

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This week’s administrative court ruling warning about the anti-democratic nature of the Muslim Brotherhood is not without precedent either.

A court in Ansbach said in 2008 with reference to IGD that the group “is an organization directed against the free and democratic order, because it represents the ideology of the Sunni-extremist Muslim Brotherhood, whose aim is the establishment of an Islamic divine nation.”

This past July I noted here at PJ Media that many Western intelligence services were subjecting the Muslim Brotherhood to greater scrutiny at the same time that the CIA and State Department were openly defending the group.

Increasingly, the pro-Muslim Brotherhood attitudes of the CIA and State Department are increasingly at odds with their sister intelligence agencies in Europe, including Germany.

In February, Die Welt reported that German intelligence was concerned that the Muslim Brotherhood was expanding its networks throughout Eastern Germany:

Those concerns about Muslim Brotherhood activity in the eastern part of the country were echoed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution:

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German’s domestic security anti-terrorism chief warned that the Muslim Brotherhood covertly sought to maintain a monopoly over mosques and impose sharia law in Germany:

Gordian Meyer-Plath, president of the regional department of the German domestic security and anti-terrorist organisation claimed the Muslim Brotherhood “have long been active in Saxony, although they were stealthy”.

The BfV anti-terror leader posed the question that when “a [large] number of Muslims have come to Germany, do they see a chance to expand their network beyond some central structures and become interesting for the new Muslims in Saxony?”

Mr Meyer-Plath claimed that while the Muslim Brotherhood in Germany is “beyond jihad” – meaning it is not directly involved with terror attacks – he says the organisation poses a threat to western democratic systems.

Mr Meyer-Plath added: “The Muslim Brothers still want to establish Sharia law in Germany.”

The Muslim Brotherhood currently operates in 70 countries. The group is reportedly sponsoring the construction of mosques in Germany in Dresden, Leipzig, Meissen, Riesa, Pirna, Bautzen and Goerlitz.

Privately, German officials reportedly are expressing concerns to their counterparts in other countries about the Muslim Brotherhood’s increasing links to terror attacks:

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Thus, while European countries seeing increased terror attacks are looking to limit the reach and influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the closest Arab Muslim allies of the U.S., the permissive attitudes toward the group expressed by the CIA and State Department are becoming an embarrassing counter-factual minority report internationally.

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