Egyptian embassies in Britain and the Netherlands have recently been subjected to vicious attacks led by young people associated with the Muslim Brotherhood group. The members of this organisation are still trapped in the past, unable to grasp the lessons of their mistakes and therefore prone to repeat them.
It would be wrong to dismiss the actions of these young people as spontaneous protest demonstrations. They clearly reflect an organisational and financial infrastructure that has allowed the Brotherhood to entrench itself in Europe for decades.
Its charities and religious centres serve as a cover for political activities that mainly target Egypt. The recent events at some Egyptian embassy gates are merely the public face of networks that have infiltrated European societies under a philanthropic guise, concealing a political and ideological agenda of an entirely different nature.
The Europe Trust is one of the Brotherhood’s most prominent facades. Established in Britain in the mid-1990s, it serves as the financial arm of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe, the Brotherhood’s main umbrella body abroad. The idea was simple but effective: to create a real estate investment trust that rents out properties to generate a steady income to fund the group’s activities including youth groups, student associations, and Islamic centres.
The network has expanded beyond Britain into Holland, where the Europe Trust Netherlands, as the new franchise is called, has acquired properties in Amsterdam, The Hague, and Rotterdam and also oversaw the construction of the famous Blauwe Moskee (Blue Mosque) in Amsterdam, which was primarily funded by the Gulf countries.
These real estate and social branches have laid the groundwork of the Brotherhood’s web of influence in Europe. Mosques and social centres have become platforms for ideological and political mobilisation, rather than places dedicated exclusively to worship and community service.
The Brotherhood’s activities have also attracted the attention of security agencies in its host countries. In a 2011 report, the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) concluded that while the Brotherhood did not pose a direct threat at the time, its activities could represent a long term danger to democracy due to the secrecy of its operations, its attempts to infiltrate civil society, and its reliance on international funding networks. In other words, the problem was not immanent violence, but rather the development of an ideological and organisational environment that could breed social isolationism and extremism in the future.
In the UK, a 2015 government review led by Sir John Jenkins reached a similar conclusion: the Brotherhood sees democracy as a means, not an end. It supports violence when it serves its goals and subscribes to an ideology incompatible with the principles of the rule of law and freedom. These warnings from two major European states show that the threat posed by the Brotherhood is not confined to its Egyptian birthplace but has also spread into Western societies.
This backdrop adds clarity to the recent attacks on the Egyptian embassies in London and The Hague. The youths who carried out these actions did not emerge from a vacuum. Nor was Palestine the real issue. The Brotherhood, as has been the case since the 30 June 2013 Revolution in Egypt, remains bent on disseminating a hostile discourse targeting the Egyptian state and its interests. Organisations like Europe Trust have used their financial resources to promote this, while posing as a legitimate representative of Muslims in Europe.
For Egypt, the challenge is not how to deal with a single incident but how to dismantle the environment that could enable its repetition. This requires a multi-pronged diplomatic, legal, and ideological approach.
Diplomatically, Egypt must ensure that European governments live up to their commitments under the Vienna Convention, which entails protecting diplomatic missions abroad and taking the necessary steps to prevent the recurrence of such attacks. At the legal level, it is important to track any suspicious funding received by the Europe Trust and other such organisations. As this process would be carried out in coordination with anti-money laundering and counterterrorism bodies, it is important to ensure that Brotherhood organisations are put on watchlists.
Ideologically, Egyptian and Arab communities in Europe also need to be exposed to an alternative discourse, one that distinguishes between genuine freedom of expression and philanthropic work on the one hand, and the instrumentalisation of religion and civil society as a cover for secret political agendas, on the other.
As the recent embassy attacks have shown, the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities persist. They have effectively been exported to Europe and are being carried out through organisations that appear legitimate. Yet, the warnings from official security bodies in both the Netherlands and Britain, combined with evidence of foreign funding and ideological links, reveal that this organisational presence could prove detrimental to the stability of European societies.
Thus, the threat challenges not only the Egyptian state, but also the very countries that have hosted the Brotherhood abroad for decades. Building security and intellectual partnerships with those countries, alongside activating the power of Egyptian communities abroad, is the most effective means to deter such attacks in the future and safeguard Egypt’s interests.
*The writer is a human rights expert.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 4 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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