“Islamophobia”

The Muslim Brotherhood is many things: a political organization with global presence; a secretive society, with high-level connections into business and government; a missionary body that seeks to maximize the presence of Islam around the world; an institution-builder, whose members are prolific in setting up organizations, putting its presence at one remove; a movement, stretching way beyond its Arab Muslim origins; and a network of networks that among other things allows Muslim and non-Muslim groups to fight alongside each other. It is associated with Hamas in Palestine and has past ties to Al-Qaeda. Its people put themselves forward as interlocutors, seeking to intercede between governments and their Muslim populations, using their networks as leverage. In some respects it is a state proxy, closely linked to Qatar and the Turkish regime of President Erdoğan. It is a charity promoter, working for the sake of Muslims and Islam worldwide, but especially in Palestine. And, last but not least, it is an ideology, with a commitment to Islamic supremacism and the defeat of the West.

These different aspects don’t always work in tandem. Indeed, the Brotherhood sometimes finds itself on different sides of political conflict. But such ambiguity can work to its advantage, creating leverage to maximize its interests and undermine its real enemies: to turn them against themselves and each other.

This week, the ONS published data on births during 2025. According to their data, for the first time over 40 per cent of children born in England and Wales had at least one foreign-born parent. This rate has risen from 34 per cent in 2021, pre-Boriswave. As recently as 2008 children of foreign parents were only 30 per cent of the population and in 1998, before the ‘Blairwave’, they represented fewer than 20 per cent of births.