Two important events took place in France in November and December that I believe will have significant repercussions in 2017, which began this week. One was an unpublicised meeting held by some Muslim Brotherhood leaders in order to lay out a strategy for the New Year. It was attended by Muslim Brotherhood leaders from Tunisia, Egypt, Qatar and other Arab countries. The other, which I observed closely during my visit to France, was the victory of Francois Fillon over his rival Alain Juppe in the French conservatives' runoff for the presidential primaries. Fillon has stated that in the event he becomes president he would review the status of the Muslim Brotherhood in France. “How is it that Egypt designates the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, yet we welcome them in France with open arms?” he said. The primaries took place at the beginning of my trip to France; the Muslim Brotherhood meeting took place towards the end. In late November, millions of French citizens headed to the polls to choose one of the contenders for The Republicans party nominee for the presidential elections that will be held in May. Before I arrived in Paris, forecasts had placed Alain Juppe, a former prime minister who subsequently held several ministerial posts, ahead of his rival, Francois Fillion, another former prime minister. Prior to that, former president Nicolas Sarkozy had failed in his bid to make a comeback as The Republicans candidate. Therefore, Fillon's victory in the runoffs came as a surprise to all. If, in May, he succeeds in entering the Elysée Palace, France's stance towards Islamist movements will change remarkably. In recent years, many radical Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, began to use France as a base for their activities. For decades, the Muslim Brotherhood exploited their opposition to the Egyptian and other Arab regimes as a means to request political asylum in some European countries on the grounds that they were persecuted in their own countries. However, they violated the internationally recognised rules of asylum by continuing their political activities in the host countries. Western nations turned a blind eye to these illegal activities until the forces of terrorism started to bite the hand that fed them. That was when some of those countries (not all) grew alert to the beast that they were sheltering within their borders. The secret meeting that Muslim Brotherhood leaders held in France 17 December was a glaring example of the Brotherhood's persistence in violating the principles of political asylum. The meeting took the guise of an intellectual seminar but, in fact, its purpose was to design a plan of action for the coming phase. It was held at the Centre for Arab and Developmental Studies, on Rue de Ste Helene in the 13th Arrondissement, ostensibly to mark the sixth anniversary of Tunisia's “Jasmine” Revolution. As many journalists in France will tell you, the centre itself was built by a member of the Tunisian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Hanid, with Qatari money. Participants in that meeting called for, among other things, a revolution in Algeria similar to the Tunisian one, support for the terrorist Islamist groups fighting in Syria and a coup against Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi. I learned from some French journalists who have been following the activities of Islamist groups in France that the original plan had been for a mass rally in which Muslim Brotherhood leaders, bent on escalating their confrontation against Arab states, would urge Arab masses in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Syria to rise up against their governments. However, after Fillon won The Republicans primaries, despite Islamist groups' campaigns in favour of his rival, Juppe, and against the larger backdrop of the Trump victory in the US and the review of the status of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain, the organisers shifted tactics and arranged for a secret meeting in order to avoid unwanted publicity and criticism under the current circumstances. In the end, only around 40 people attended the meeting. Chief among them was a senior Muslim Brotherhood official, Mohamed Mahsoub, who had served as a minister in the Morsi government in Egypt. Mahsoub is also a prominent member of the so-called “Committee for the Defence of the Revolution and Democracy” which was also announced in France early in 2016 and which includes among its members Ayman Nour, Muncef Al-Marzouki and Tawakkol Karman. Mahsoub had apparently wanted to keep his presence at that meeting secret and refused to deliver a speech. Another Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood member on hand was Ahmed Salem, who lives in Europe. Other participants included Abdel-Latif Makki, Salim Ben Hamidan, Yasmin Ayari, the prominent Tunisian Muslim Brotherhood businessman Mohamed Ali Sharad, Abdel-Jawwad Bouslimi, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader Ahmed Khattab and the head of the centre, Mohamed Hanid. Undoubtedly, that meeting did not escape the attention of French authorities, especially these days when the intentions and plans of Islamist groups in Europe are increasingly coming under the glare of suspicion. Indeed, one of the essential items on the platform of any nominee for the French presidency, as was the case in the US elections, was a pledge to fight terrorism and root out those terrorist groups from the country. Francois Fillion was the most recent example. The foregoing leads us to believe that the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and some Western governments will head in a new direction next year. The election of Trump in the US, Fillon's step closer to the presidency in France and the review of the status of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK are signs of this. The Muslim Brotherhood read them and reduced the profile of their planned rally to a secret meeting. Perhaps the coming year will bring the beginning of the end of the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood and likeminded organisations not just in France but in other Western nations that had given a home to extremist Islamist groups for many years without being aware of their danger.
