Who wants to silence Bergeaud-Blackler?

“The smoking gun” by Tina Magaard

When a professor and a senior researcher cheat, manipulate and fabricate false accusations

Editor’s note. In her op-ed, Tina Magaard refers to an in-depth analysis of Lene Kühle and Manni Crone’s accusations, published by Pressto. We reproduce below its English translation, made from the French translation. The original version, in Danish, is available on the publisher’s website: forlaget-pressto.dk/images/The-smoking-gun-Broderismen.pdf

Notice concerning Lene Kühle and Manni Crone’s attack on the book Broderisme. Sådan undergraver islamister de vestlige samfund (Brotherism: How Islamists Undermine Western Societies) by Florence Bergeaud-Blackler (Pressto, 2024).

Translation note. Passages from Broderismen quoted here are given from the Danish edition: their translation into English does not reproduce Florence Bergeaud-Blackler’s original text. Quotations from Sylvain Besson are translated from their original French wording where the notes to the Danish text provide it. Quotations from Richard Labévière are translated from the French rendering of the English edition (Dollars for Terror, Algora, 2000), the only edition consulted by the author of the notice; they may differ from the wording of that edition.

Berøringsangst (“Fear of contact”) is the title of a recently published book documenting how teachers, social workers, nurses and other public employees find themselves, in their daily work, checkmated by colleagues who seek to promote an Islamist agenda within society’s core institutions. From within.

But what patterns of thought underlie this Islamic normative pressure? Why has research not long since given us the tools to decode it?

Weekendavisen has previously published a story that is highly relevant in this respect: in her book Broderisme: Sådan undergraver islamister de vestlige samfund, the French researcher Florence Bergeaud-Blackler tried to convey an understanding of these patterns of thought. But Professor Lene Kühle of Aarhus University and senior researcher Manni Crone of DIIS attacked the book, accusing it of being unable to document its “central thesis on Islamist infiltration”.

Berlingske asked me to comment on the case. However, I did not want to express a view before I had had time to examine it. I have now done so.

From my very first reading of Kühle and Crone’s investigation, alarm bells started ringing. Several of the references, both to Broderismen and to other works that Kühle and Crone claim Bergeaud-Blackler misuses, did not add up. So I obtained the sources to which they refer in order to go through their claims with a fine-tooth comb. As the work progressed, one thing became ever clearer: Kühle and Crone cheat, manipulate and fabricate false accusations in order to reach their conclusions.

The so-called “smoking gun” example appears to be one of the most important pivots of Kühle and Crone’s criticism of Bergeaud-Blackler. It should be noted here that “the smoking gun” is not an expression FBB uses herself; flashy phrases of that kind are not her style. It is Kühle and Crone who use it, in an interview with Weekendavisen, where they ask the following rhetorical question:

“Should the debate take as its starting point a book that (…) presents a central document - the smoking gun - with a manipulated quotation and without stating the source?”¹

When KC present things in this way, readers may come to doubt whether the central document even exists. Where did Bergeaud-Blackler get it from?

The document is reproduced in the book by Swiss investigative journalist Sylvain Besson, La Conquête de l’Occident. Le Projet secret des islamistes, published in 2005.² In my view, it is a document everyone should know about, regardless of the footnote quarrel between Bergeaud-Blackler and KC. It is indeed one of many documents that can shed light on the question of whether Islamic infiltration of European welfare societies is originally linked to a practical and financial strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The history of this document is striking. In the wake of 9/11, an Islamic bank and investment fund called al-Taqwa was suspected of having been involved in financing al-Qaeda terrorism. The Swiss police therefore carried out a search at the home of the bank’s head, Youssef Nada, a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood. Not enough evidence was found to bring proceedings for direct terrorist financing. But something else was found. As Besson writes:

“On the evening of 7 November 2001, the investigators left Campione with lorry-loads of documents. They show that the Muslim Brotherhood has, for decades, built an underground network in Europe serving its political ambition: the creation of a perfect Islamic society which will one day supplant the West as the guiding force of humanity.”³

Among the thousands of documents the police found during the search of Nada’s home is the one to which FBB refers. It is a fourteen-page text in Arabic entitled Towards a Worldwide Strategy for Islamic Policy (Points of Departure, Elements, Procedures and Missions).⁴ Besson’s book uses the shorter title The Project, which I will also use here. According to Besson, this document is important because it reveals “the most secret political intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood”⁵, and because it gives practical guidance on how to infiltrate Western societies. Anyone wishing to take part in the debate on whether there is targeted Islamist infiltration of our societies needs to know this document, regardless of the footnote quarrel between Bergeaud-Blackler and KC.

But let us return to Bergeaud-Blackler’s book, Broderismen: Sådan undergraver islamister de vestlige samfund. How does she treat this important document? She examines it on pages 81 to 84 (pages reproduced here).

Bergeaud-Blackler first presents the context of the search of Nada’s home, then narrows the focus to the Project. She does not reproduce the Project in full, which runs to fourteen pages in Besson. Instead, FBB chooses to devote about two pages to summarising the points of the Project she considers most important: that the ultimate goal, an Islamic state, is to be achieved through a (bold added by me) “gradual effort” aimed, “through institutional work”, at gaining “control of local centres of power”. The document calls for selecting areas where “Islamic power” is to be established. More concretely, it calls for setting up “specialised Islamic economic and social institutions”. At the same time, “temporary cooperation must be established between Islamic movements and national movements”, for example “in the anti-colonial struggle and in the struggle against the Jewish state”. Finally, it recommends “enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong”⁶ (= exercising Islamic normative pressure). These quotations are taken directly from the Project as it appears in Besson’s book. I double-checked them, both against Bergeaud-Blackler’s original French text and against Besson’s book.

Bergeaud-Blackler presents this document from Sylvain Besson’s book as one piece of evidence among many pointing in the same direction: namely, that the Islamic normative pressure observable in Europe today can be linked to the strategic and economic effort to promote Islamic infiltration launched by the European network of the Muslim Brotherhood almost half a century ago.

What is Kühle and Crone’s position on this? They pass over the document’s overall message in silence and thus deprive the reader of empirical knowledge that is important for the discussion of Islamic infiltration. Instead, Kühle and Crone choose to saturate the reader’s horizon with their attacks on this passage of the book. It is these attacks that we will examine below. They fall into the following categories:

1. KC use minor errors as a pretext for sweeping conclusions that this type of error cannot support.
2. KC misrepresent Bergeaud-Blackler’s position, thereby giving the impression that she has made mistakes she has not made.
3. KC fabricate false accusations against Bergeaud-Blackler.
4. KC cheat with a decisive quotation from the primary source.
5. KC cast doubt not only on Bergeaud-Blackler’s credibility, but also on that of Besson and the Swiss investigators, by suspecting, without the slightest shred of evidence, that the Project is a “forgery”.

One has to be careful here, because we must distinguish between sentences belonging to one of the following three categories:

1. Quotations from FBB and Besson. These are marked in bold.
2. KC’s attacks on Broderismen. These are marked by underlining.
3. My critical examination of the soundness of KC’s attacks. Unmarked.

1. KC use minor errors as a pretext for sweeping conclusions that this type of error cannot support

Some of the errors KC point out are real and should be corrected in future editions. They are, however, typically minor formal errors. The problem is that KC use these errors as a starting point for sweeping conclusions that this type of error cannot support.

EXAMPLE 1

In their investigation, KC present the following table, drawn from their examination and diagnosis of FBB’s errors:

In the first column, they quote the passage of FBB’s book that they attack: “The document, which is written in Arabic, consists of twelve points and begins as follows.” Note 68.

In the second column, they explain where, in their view, the problem lies: “The quotation from the document mentioned is not found in the note 68 given.”⁷ In the third column, they classify the type of error as “carelessness/manipulation of quotations and source” and “incorrect reference”.

Is what KC write right or wrong? Which work does FBB refer to in note 68? She refers to Sylvain Besson’s series of articles “L’histoire secrète des islamistes en Occident (1/6). Les secrets d’Al-Taqwa, la banque suisse de l’islam radical”, Le Temps, 2005.⁸

KC are right on one point: the document quoted is found in Besson’s book, not in his series of articles. FBB thus credits the right author (Sylvain Besson), but ends up referring to his series of articles instead of his book.

How serious is this error? Two remarks are called for.

REMARK 1. First, KC fail to inform the reader that both the series of articles and the book deal with the thousands of documents the police took away during the search of Nada’s home in 2001. The purpose of the series of articles is to arouse the reader’s interest in the book, since it was published ahead of the book’s release and each article in the series ends with a reference to the book. The central theme of both the book and the series of articles is how the documents seized from Nada reveal the Brotherhood’s secret plan to infiltrate and Islamise Western societies. The book and the series of articles are therefore closely linked thematically, and the series of articles leads the reader to the book. Bergeaud-Blackler’s oversight is therefore not enough to support KC’s accusation that the thesis of Islamist infiltration lacks documentation, since both sources document precisely that.

REMARK 2. The question is how serious Bergeaud-Blackler’s error is when judged by KC’s own standard of review. In God citatskik og plagiat i tekster (“Good citation practice and plagiarism in texts”), which KC claim to follow, we read: “The author’s name must always be given when quoting. In addition, at least the title and the publisher/medium should be given.”⁹

It can be argued here that FBB gave what is mandatory - the author’s name - but not what is recommended - the title and publisher of Besson’s book. My assessment is that, even though FBB formally meets the “must” requirement laid down by KC’s standard of review, she would have been well advised also to meet the “should” requirement as regards citing the correct work. If only to prevent exactly what is happening here: the form being attacked in order to divert the reader’s attention from the empirical material which, according to Besson, “shows that the Muslim Brotherhood has, for decades, built an underground network in Europe serving its political ambition”.¹⁰

Who helps us best to understand what empirical material exists concerning this “political ambition” to infiltrate Western societies?

Bergeaud-Blackler takes us a good part of the way, since she reports information drawn from Besson’s series of articles and book. But she also puts a spoke in our wheels: by omitting the reference to the book, she makes it harder to access the primary source that we would like to know about independently of her own book.

KC, for their part, trip us up in my view far more seriously, since they exploit Bergeaud-Blackler’s carelessness to lead us away altogether from the documentation on the Brotherhood’s infiltration effort presented by Sylvain Besson. They thereby considerably curtail our ability to bring the relevant empirical material into the discussion of the experiences of infiltration and Islamic normative pressure that certain citizens in Denmark are living through today - for example, professionals in the social sector.¹¹

EXAMPLE 2

KC also use the fact that FBB referred to Besson’s series of articles rather than his book against her in assessing the sentence below, without informing the reader that they are using this one and the same footnote error to attack two sentences.

On page 82 of Broderismen, we read:

“The document, which [is] addressed to the supreme leadership of the Brotherhood, appears to have been written in deliberately vague language, as if to anticipate that it might fall into the wrong hands. It is a kind of roadmap, designed to communicate initial instructions.”¹²

On this point, KC assert that “the claim (…) appears undocumented”.¹³ Formally, they are right. There is no documentation for this precise sentence in the series of articles by Besson to which FBB refers, but there is in Besson’s book. Since KC know the book and refer to it themselves, they should have pointed out to us that this is where FBB draws her information from. If we break FBB’s sentence down into three, we can see the following:

a) “The document (…) [is] addressed to the supreme leadership of the Brotherhood” is a paraphrase of Besson’s assessment that the document is “reserved for the ruling elite of the Muslim Brotherhood”.¹⁴

b) That the document “appears to have been written in deliberately vague language, as if to anticipate that it might fall into the wrong hands” is Bergeaud-Blackler’s own assessment, which she moreover signals with the word “appears”. It is an assessment one may or may not agree with, but I would not call it an error. Kühle and Crone themselves make use of this kind of assessment, with which the reader may or may not agree. Kühle writes, for example, in Danmarks moskéer: mangfoldighed og samspil, that “the construction of this prominent mosque appears to have functioned as a reminder to the rest of society of the presence of Shia Islam”.¹⁵ Similarly, Crone writes in her article Hjemmedyrket terrorisme trussel eller skrøne that “the Vollsmose case of 2006 and the Glostrup case of 2005 appear to have been cases of open source terrorism”.¹⁶ Neither Kühle nor Crone gives a note or reference for these assessments. But if Kühle and Crone believe that Bergeaud-Blackler should refer to documentation for her assessment, they are applying a stricter formal standard to Bergeaud-Blackler’s popular book than to their own scholarly publications. Why? It is for them to explain.

c) “It is a kind of roadmap, designed to communicate initial instructions.” Bergeaud-Blackler borrows the expression “roadmap” (“feuille de route”, in French in the text) from Besson’s book, where it is used by one of the investigators he quotes.¹⁷

Since KC know Besson’s book, they should have pointed out that the documentation for Bergeaud-Blackler’s claims is found in Besson’s book, not in the series of articles to which Bergeaud-Blackler refers in note 68. They do not. Instead, they give the reader the impression that we have here yet another example of claims by Bergeaud-Blackler for which no documentation exists.

EXAMPLE 3

In this third example, KC once again reuse the single footnote error, the one where Bergeaud-Blackler refers only to Besson’s series of articles and not to his book. They attack a sentence whose information is drawn from both the series of articles and the book. Bergeaud-Blackler writes:

“The financial network is allegedly linked not only to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but also to the head of the Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to Hamas, to the Algerian GIA and to the Tunisian Islamist movement Ennahda.”¹⁸

KC again accuse Bergeaud-Blackler of “lack of documentation”, writing: “Nothing is said about either the GIA or Ennahdha.” But the GIA and Ennahda are mentioned in Besson’s book, pp. 160 and 163.¹⁹ The rest of the information is in the series of articles to which FBB refers (see the section below, “KC fabricate false accusations against Bergeaud-Blackler”).

How did KC influence the debate?

Had KC chosen to give the public access to as much information as possible about Islamic infiltration, they would have told us that Bergeaud-Blackler, in note 68, refers only to Besson’s series of articles and not to his book, but that the information not found in the series of articles is indeed in the book.

Had they done so, the consequence for the public debate would probably have been that we would have discussed the content of the Project, and the question of whether its ideas may have had a bearing on the Islamic infiltration of today’s European welfare societies. Readers wishing to go further could have read Bergeaud-Blackler’s book and supplemented it with Besson’s work - both the series of articles and the book.

But KC choose a method that instead blocks the reader’s access to the valid information on the Islamic infiltration of European welfare societies presented by Besson. They hijack Bergeaud-Blackler’s single footnote oversight to derive three separate accusations from it, according to which Bergeaud-Blackler’s information - and therefore Besson’s - is “undocumented”. How might this have influenced the debate?

It is reasonable to imagine that KC thereby led the reader to believe that Bergeaud-Blackler has no documentation for the thesis of Islamist infiltration, but that it is instead a conspiracy theory she invented herself. That will lead any self-respecting reader to flee the debate and, moreover, to keep well away from both Broderismen and its sources. The result is a truncated debate, since KC have thereby silenced essential documentation on Islamist infiltration, which is thus withdrawn from public attention.

2. KC misrepresent Bergeaud-Blackler’s position, thereby giving the impression that she has made mistakes she has not made

In their investigation, in the section “Documentation problems/use of sources”, KC attack Bergeaud-Blackler’s use of the document The Project with the following arguments:

1) “It is not known who wrote it.”²⁰ But that is precisely what Bergeaud-Blackler herself explains. She writes: “Where does the document come from? The police investigators are not sure.”²¹ FBB has therefore made no mistake. Besson, moreover, does not appear to doubt that both the author and the recipients are to be found among leading figures of the Muslim Brotherhood.²² KC withhold this information, thereby also misrepresenting Besson’s account of the document’s significance.

2) “It is not an official Brotherhood document.”²³ But Bergeaud-Blackler never claims that it is.

3) “The source itself is not about Osama bin Laden, but about one of his “lieutenants”, and the lead was abandoned for lack of sufficient documentation.”²⁴

Yet Bergeaud-Blackler does not claim that the source is about bin Laden. Quite the contrary. Bin Laden appears only on page 81, in the subordinate clause “an international offensive against the Brotherhood, suspected of being linked to the al-Qaeda movement”, and, a little further down the page, where FBB writes that “the financial network is allegedly linked not only to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but also to the head of the Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to Hamas, to the Algerian GIA and to the Tunisian Islamist movement Ennahda”.²⁵ These passages faithfully reflect the way in which the areas of contact between al-Qaeda and the various branches of the Muslim Brotherhood are presented in Besson’s texts²⁶, as well as in the other source cited by Bergeaud-Blackler, namely Labévière’s Les Dollars de la terreur. Les États-Unis et les islamistes.²⁷

As these three examples show, KC strengthen their case-building by misrepresenting Bergeaud-Blackler’s position, thereby giving the impression that she makes mistakes she has not made.

3. KC fabricate false accusations against Bergeaud-Blackler

On page 81, FBB provides essential background information on the Project. To understand the possible striking power of the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme leadership in carrying out the strategy set out in the Project, it is necessary to take into account the financial networks to which Youssef Nada and al-Taqwa have access. Bergeaud-Blackler writes:

“The financial network is allegedly linked not only to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but also to the head of the Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to Hamas, to the Algerian GIA and to the Tunisian Islamist movement Ennahda.”²⁸

The table below shows what KC write about this quotation. Note how KC distort the quotation in the first column:

In column 1, KC make it sound as though FBB writes that it is the document that is linked to the network. But that is not what FBB writes, as can be seen from the quotation at the top of the page. She is writing about the FINANCIAL NETWORK of which Youssef Nada was a part.

And it gets worse. Building on their alteration of FBB’s quotation, KC make a series of false accusations:

• “no source given”
• “These elements are not found in the following Swiss source, note 68 (nor in the preceding note 67).”
• “Lack of documentation”
• “Addition of information not found in the source given.”

All four of these charges are false.

KC write “no source given”, but this is not true. Notes 67 and 68 give two sources from which FBB draws her information:

Note 67. On Islamist financing and the links between peaceful and violent Brothers, see R. Labévière, Les Dollars de la terreur. Les États-Unis et les islamistes, Paris, Grasset et Fasquelle, 1999, pp. 156-160, and https://blogs.mediapart.fr/danyves/blog/300817/et-revoila-les-dollars-de-la-terreur

Note 68. The information comes from a series of articles written by the Swiss investigative journalist Sylvain Besson, “L’histoire secrète des islamistes en Occident (1/6). Les secrets d’Al-Taqwa, la banque suisse de l’islam radical”, Le Temps, 2005 (available online, see articles 1/6 and 3/6).

Nor, therefore, is it true when KC paraphrase themselves three times, adding “lack of documentation”, or “These elements are not found in the following Swiss source, note 68 (nor in the preceding note 67)”, or “Addition of information not found in the source given”.

I will now go through the two sources FBB cites and check what support she finds in them for her claim.

3a) What does the reference in note 68 say?

Note 68 refers to Sylvain Besson’s series of articles, “L’histoire secrète des islamistes en Occident”, which Besson published in the newspaper Le Temps as a foretaste ahead of the release of his book.²⁹ Does Besson’s series of articles contain evidence of financial links between al-Taqwa, bin Laden, al-Qaradawi, Hamas, the GIA and Ennahda?

Al-Qaradawi is mentioned 17 times in the series of articles.³⁰ According to Besson, he is “one of the main shareholders of al-Taqwa”. The financial link that FBB highlights in the quotation above is therefore documented by Besson. Al-Qaradawi also appears on a videotape showing him, together with al-Taqwa representative Ali Ghaleb Himmat, on a tour of Afghanistan. See the entry below on Ali Ghaleb Himmat.

Ali Ghaleb Himmat appears 10 times in the series of articles³¹, and is linked both to al-Qaeda and to al-Qaradawi by a videotape found during the search of Nada’s home. The video comes from a trip to Afghanistan, where Himmat stayed in the area around the al-Qaeda base near Lake Derunta. In a hotel in Jalalabad, Himmat is seen meeting a delegation from the Brotherhood’s supreme leadership: the preacher al-Qaradawi and Mustafa Mashhur (Supreme Guide of the Brotherhood from 1996 to 2002). The tape also shows Mashhur giving a speech in Kabul, rallying people to fight “the enemies of Islam”, and concluding: “I assure you that, just as the Soviet Union collapsed, so the United States and the West will succumb, with God’s help.” Besson’s comment is as follows: “For the investigators, this speech reflects the moral and sometimes material support given by the Muslim Brotherhood to the terrorist international of which Osama bin Laden would become the figurehead.”³²

Osama bin Laden is mentioned 17 times in the series of articles³³, where Besson writes, among other things, that bin Laden “plays a covert game” with the Muslim Brotherhood.³⁴ As FBB writes in our quotation from Broderismen, however, the link between al-Taqwa’s financial network and bin Laden’s terrorist acts is “alleged”. This is entirely in line with what Besson explains.³⁵

That the evidence was insufficient for a trial does not, however, mean that al-Taqwa was entirely cleared of all suspicion. 2001 was not the first time al-Taqwa had been suspected of financing terrorism. According to Besson, the Swiss authorities had already received reports to the same effect from European and Arab intelligence services during the 1990s.³⁶ But because the information on the links between al-Taqwa and al-Qaeda came from confidential intelligence sources that could not be used in court³⁷, it never proved possible to convict Nada or other al-Taqwa officials of financing terrorism. Al-Taqwa’s structure apparently did not make it easy to see what was going on inside the bank either. As Besson explains in the series of articles:

“Al-Taqwa’s structure - spread across the Bahamas, Ticino and Liechtenstein - is so diffuse that even today the Swiss authorities do not know exactly where the company’s financial centre was. Its accounts, stored somewhere in Saudi Arabia, have never been located.”³⁸

Without access to the accounts, it is not easy to convict anyone of financing terrorism. It is not hard to imagine how the prosecution had to give up bringing the case to court, owing to the combination of Swiss banking secrecy, the principles of Islamic finance and the reluctance of intelligence services to declassify evidence.

Hamas is mentioned 6 times³⁹, among other things in connection with transfers of funds between al-Taqwa and KA Overseas, which, according to Besson, the Swiss investigators describe as the “financial hub” of a Hamas leader.⁴⁰

Ennahda is not mentioned in Besson’s series of articles, but its founder and long-standing leader, Ghannouchi, is (twice), for example in connection with a transfer of funds made to him by Youssef Nada.⁴¹ Ennahda is mentioned in Besson’s book, pp. 160 and 163.⁴²

The GIA is not mentioned in Besson’s series of articles, but it is mentioned in his book, p. 163.⁴³

Conclusion regarding note 68: we have checked here whether KC have any basis for their claim that “these elements are not found” in the reference in note 68. It must be said that what KC write is not true. Besson’s series of articles, to which note 68 refers, provides abundant documentation for FBB’s claim concerning bin Laden, al-Qaradawi and Hamas, and in part Ennahda. Besson’s book provides the rest of the documentation, concerning the GIA and Ennahda. Here again, FBB should have referred to Besson’s book and not only to the series of articles, but she writes nothing that cannot be documented in Besson’s 2005 work.

3b) What does the reference in note 67 say?

We must now examine the link between note 67 and FBB’s claim:

“The financial network is allegedly linked not only to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but also to the head of the Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to Hamas, to the Algerian GIA and to the Tunisian Islamist movement Ennahda.”

KC maintain that “these elements are not found in (…) note 67”.⁴⁴ But what does note 67 say?

In note 67, FBB refers to Richard Labévière’s 1999 book Les Dollars de la terreur. Les États-Unis et les islamistes.⁴⁵ The question now is whether Labévière confirms or refutes the existence of financial links between the al-Taqwa bank, al-Qaeda, the GIA and the various representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, such as al-Qaradawi, Hamas and Ennahda.

I consulted the 2000 English translation, Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam.⁴⁶ As Labévière writes in his foreword: “by reconstructing the financial circuits of terrorism, we have a better chance of understanding the true nature of Islamist ideology”.⁴⁷ In the course of his four-year investigation, which initially focused on Iranian financing of terrorism, however, something surprising happened each time: “Each time, I came across the Muslim Brotherhood.”⁴⁸ That is why Labévière thought it relevant to devote an entire chapter to “The Muslim Brothers’ Holy (and Financial) War”.⁴⁹

The links between the Muslim Brotherhood and the financial circuits of Islamist terrorist organisations in the 1990s are therefore not an invention of Bergeaud-Blackler or of Besson. It is something that the investigative journalist Labévière spent four years mapping, before Besson had even become aware of the phenomenon.

In his research aimed at understanding Islamic financing of terrorism, Labévière comes across al-Taqwa, which he refers to as A.T. He notes that the bank’s head is Youssef Nada and that, in “financial circles”, it is “regarded as the Brotherhood’s bank”.⁵⁰

Youssef Nada’s name recurs regularly in Labévière’s book, where he is mentioned 9 times.⁵¹ For example on page 153, where he recounts how the Muslim Brotherhood found an “extremely favourable context” for its expansion in Europe: “Nada, like Said Ramadan, took advantage of an extremely favourable context and used it as a springboard for the economic activities of the Muslim Brotherhood.”⁵²

Ali Ghaleb Himmat we encounter twice.⁵³ He is presented as “Youssef Nada’s assistant”. In addition to his work at al-Taqwa, he also works for a holding company whose director runs a large number of financial companies, some of which can be traced back to what Labévière calls “the A.T. nebula”:

“A.T. established itself with NIGH (Nasreddin International Group Holdings) - 10, rue Dewaux in Nassau. (…) The NIGH holding company deserves close attention. Ali Ghaleb Himmat, Youssef Nada’s assistant, works there. (…) The chairman and founder of NIGH, Nasreddin Ahmed Idris, who also appears on the list of A.T.’s first shareholders, (…) runs a multitude of financial companies, most of which ultimately lead back to the A.T. nebula. One of them, Gulf Office (…) currently dormant, had been housed in the same building as the Lugano mosque.”⁵⁴

Lugano, incidentally, is precisely where Youssef Nada lived until the 2001 search. The link between “the A.T. nebula” and the Lugano mosque suggests, more than it might seem, a connection between the religious and the financial that goes beyond what most Europeans imagine.

The GIA is mentioned 10 times.⁵⁵ Of particular interest regarding the GIA is its link with the Gulf Office mentioned above:

“The telephone details of the Gulf Office are the same as those appearing on a propaganda video of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) sold under the counter in European mosques since the end of 1994. The images were recorded after the attack on the prefect of Tissemsilt and his guards, some 130 kilometres south of Algiers. It was one of the GIA’s first large-scale ambushes, in January 1994. The document is not about the attack itself, but about the Islamists’ return to their camp; it shows their joy at having put infidels to death, at having killed in the name of Allah.”⁵⁶

According to Labévière, then, there is some form of link between the GIA and al-Taqwa. That there are no watertight partitions between the GIA and the Brotherhood is also confirmed by the fact that FIS leader Anwar Haddam serves, according to Labévière, as a link between the FIS and the GIA in several contexts.⁵⁷

Osama bin Laden is mentioned 11 times.⁵⁸ Labévière writes: “everything inevitably leads us back to the Sunni terrorist networks made up of former Afghan mujahideen, most of them trained by the CIA (…) one inevitably comes across the Saudi Osama bin Laden”.⁵⁹ Note that Labévière’s book dates from 1999, that is, before bin Laden became widely known because of 11 September 2001. But Labévière warned as early as 1999 that we would be hearing more about this man. His personal fortune alone, of 3 billion dollars⁶⁰, makes him remarkable, because it gives him the freedom to support whatever networks he wants and to finance whatever holy war he wants. Labévière therefore devotes considerable space to the links between his fortune, his investments and his international networks of Islamists. Al-Taqwa is not explicitly mentioned in this respect, but the networks that al-Taqwa, according to Besson and Labévière, helped to finance are.

Hamas is mentioned 10 times.⁶¹ Labévière highlights “the financial aid that the Muslim Brotherhood’s bank [al-Taqwa] granted to the Palestinian Hamas”.⁶²

Ennahda (spelled An-nahda here) is mentioned 3 times.⁶³ The organisation is mentioned, among other things, in connection with transfers of funds to the Gama’a al-Islamiyya, a Lebanese terrorist organisation.⁶⁴

Al-Qaradawi is mentioned twice. He is presented as “the theorist of international Islamic finance”.⁶⁵ But that is not all. On page 139, Labévière reports what Nada himself said about al-Qaradawi’s role in the bank:

“A.T. was the bank of the Muslim Brotherhood. From the beginning of its activities, Youssef Nada explained, A.T. placed all its transactions under the control of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”⁶⁶

Conclusion regarding note 67: Labévière thus provides abundant information confirming what FBB writes about the financial links between al-Taqwa, the various organisations of the Brotherhood and terrorist networks. It is therefore a false accusation when KC maintain that these elements are not found in note 67.

3c) Conclusion regarding notes 67 and 68

Bergeaud-Blackler writes that “the financial network [of al-Taqwa] (…) [is] allegedly linked not only to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but also to the head of the Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to Hamas, to the Algerian GIA and to the Tunisian Islamist movement Ennahda”.

Is it true, as KC maintain, that “these elements are not found in the following Swiss source, note 68 (nor in the preceding note 67)”?⁶⁷

No. It is a lie. In both references cited, Bergeaud-Blackler finds solid empirical support for the fact that al-Taqwa’s “financial network” is “allegedly linked not only to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but also to the head of the Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to Hamas, to the Algerian GIA and to the Tunisian Islamist movement Ennahda”. The central theme of her two references in notes 67 and 68, Labévière and Besson, is precisely the investigation of these financial networks.

Particularly noteworthy is the information from Labévière and Besson on al-Qaradawi, for many years the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief ideologue. He is widely known as an extremely influential preacher, both globally and among Europe’s Muslims. But according to Besson and Labévière, he is not only a theorist of “Islamic finance”; he is also described as a “main shareholder” of al-Taqwa, and is said to control the bank’s transactions. If this is correct, the information raises new questions about the financial means al-Qaradawi had at his disposal to influence young European Muslims during the 1990s.

In short: KC go to the media with their authority as “professor” and “senior researcher”, and make serious accusations against FBB. Accusations that turn out to be entirely and utterly false.

But even though their accusations are untrue, it is to be expected that they have already succeeded in driving some readers away from Bergeaud-Blackler’s book. In a second step, this means that they also block the reader’s access to the information provided by Besson and Labévière. This is therefore no trivial manipulation that KC inflict on the reader. It is a manipulation that steers us away from the above information on the networks and financial resources of the Muslim Brotherhood during the period when it consolidated itself in Europe. This is therefore essential information if one wants to understand or examine further what resources the Brotherhood had at its disposal for its project. It is this understanding that Professor Kühle and senior researcher Crone undermine through their manipulation.

4. KC cheat with a decisive quotation from the primary source

Kühle and Crone warn the reader against attaching any significance to the Project. They claim that “according to Besson, it is wrong to understand the history of Islamism in its light”.⁶⁸

The problem: that is NOT what Besson writes. He writes (emphasis in capitals added by me):

“it would be wrong to interpret the recent history of Islamism in the light of the Project ALONE”.⁶⁹

The word “alone” makes all the difference. It is therefore no innocent matter that KC pretend to quote Besson while removing the word “alone” from the sentence without informing the reader.

What are KC doing? In God citatskik og plagiat i tekster - vejledende retningslinjer, which KC themselves claim to follow, we read:

“A number of circumstances can make a quotation unlawful. This may be the case, for example, if (…) the quotation is distorted, for example rewritten or misquoted (quotation fraud).”

By their own standard of review, KC are therefore committing quotation fraud, since they distort Besson’s sentence by removing the word “alone”.⁷⁰

This is cheating of decisive importance for assessing the message of FBB as well as that of Besson. KC make Besson’s message sound like the opposite of what it really is. Besson in no way denies that the Project is significant for the recent history of Islamism. Quite the contrary. The whole purpose of his book is to argue that it is of decisive significance. He explains that the document must be seen in relation to the lorry-loads of documents confiscated from Nada at the same time as the Project. Besson is particularly interested in the connection between the Project and a document entitled (in French) Stratégie financière des Frères musulmans (Financial Strategy of the Muslim Brotherhood). The latter defines how the strategy of influence and infiltration set out in the Project is to be financed. Besson writes:

“These two texts demonstrate the existence at the top of the Brotherhood of a well-funded, secret organisation whose work in the service of the Project began decades ago.”⁷¹

The sum of the documents seized shows, according to one of the investigators interviewed by Besson, that we are dealing with a

“totalitarian ideology of infiltration which ultimately represents the greatest danger for European societies (…) we will see demands for a parallel system emerge in Europe (…) then the slow destruction of our institutions, of our structures will begin”.⁷²

It is therefore not just quotation fraud, but also gross manipulation on the part of Kühle and Crone, when they write that it is “according to Besson, wrong to understand the history of Islamism in the light” of the Project.

We are compelled to ask: what are KC trying to achieve when they engage in quotation fraud and manipulation in their description of Broderismen: Sådan undergraver islamister de vestlige samfund? Is it to steer us away from the information on the Brotherhood’s infiltration strategy traced by Besson? We are still waiting for an explanation.

5. KC cast doubt not only on Bergeaud-Blackler’s credibility, but also on that of Besson and the Swiss investigators, by suspecting, without the slightest shred of evidence, that the Project is a “forgery”

Kühle is not content with brushing aside the document’s significance. In an interview with Weekendavisen, she warns: “it is disputed whether [the Project] is authentic or a forgery.”⁷³ But Kühle does not document who disputes its authenticity. Nor does Kühle say whom she suspects of having forged the Project. Is it Sylvain Besson she is accusing of forgery? One of Switzerland’s most respected investigative journalists? He received the prestigious Swiss Press Award in 2017 for his journalistic work, has nearly thirty years of experience covering economic crime and opaque networks, and has also been editor-in-chief of the national section of the daily Le Temps. If Kühle believes that a man of this calibre has forged raw journalistic material, she owes it to the Swiss public to say so.

Or is it one of the Swiss police investigators whom Kühle suspects of having forged a document confiscated during a search? Under Article 317 of the Swiss Criminal Code⁷⁴, forgery of documents by a public official is punishable by up to five years. It is therefore serious criminality that Kühle implies has taken place. If she has information to that effect, why has she not reported it? Is it because the accusation of “forgery” is of her own making? In that case, the example is symptomatic of the way she and Crone are acting in this affair: they themselves fabricate insinuations, quotation fraud and false accusations, while accusing others of doing so.

Conclusion

Florence Bergeaud-Blackler’s book Broderismen: Sådan undergraver islamister de vestlige samfund was met in the Danish debate with serious accusations from Lene Kühle and Manni Crone. Accusations liable to drive readers away from the book. Their rhetorical question - “Should the debate take as its starting point a book that (…) presents a central document - the smoking gun - with a manipulated quotation and without stating the source?”⁷⁵ - served as the starting point for this notice. Through statements of this kind, Kühle and Crone chose not to debate the book’s message, but to accuse Bergeaud-Blackler of manipulation and lack of documentation. Yet on examining their accusations, we have been able to establish that, in their criticism of this example from Broderismen: Sådan undergraver islamister de vestlige samfund, KC have the following modus operandi:

1. KC use minor errors as a pretext for sweeping conclusions that this type of error cannot support.
2. KC misrepresent Bergeaud-Blackler’s position, thereby giving the impression that she has made mistakes she has not made.
3. KC fabricate false accusations against Bergeaud-Blackler.
4. KC cheat with a decisive quotation from the primary source.
5. KC cast doubt not only on Bergeaud-Blackler’s credibility, but also on that of Besson and the Swiss investigators, by suspecting, without the slightest shred of evidence, that the Project is a “forgery”.

This does not mean that there are no errors to be found in Broderismen. In this text we have seen the example of FBB referring to Besson’s series of articles but forgetting to refer to his book. But, as here, one most often finds that the errors and inaccuracies that can be identified do not invalidate the documentation on infiltration strategies and Islamic normative pressure in Western societies, as found in the sources or in the authors to which Bergeaud-Blackler refers.

If only KC’s dispute had stayed within the thick walls of the research world, the rest of us could have spent our time reading all the literature to which Bergeaud-Blackler refers. But the problem is that Kühle and Crone intervened in the public debate in a way that gives the public the impression that the examples of Islamic normative pressure and infiltration given by Bergeaud-Blackler are merely a product of her imagination. It is not unrealistic to assume that Kühle and Crone have thereby prevented the Danish public from gaining important knowledge about a possible Islamist infiltration of European welfare societies.

That is why this concerns us, and why we cannot let this matter drop. We owe nothing less to those who, in their daily lives, are subjected to pressure from citizens and colleagues seeking to promote an Islamist agenda within society’s core institutions.

Danish society has entrusted Kühle and Crone with positions of trust as professor and senior researcher, at Aarhus University and the Danish Institute for International Studies respectively. An aura of credibility surrounds these titles and institutions. It is behind the screen of this credibility that Kühle and Crone have been able to mislead a large part of the public.

This state of affairs should lead to a more principled discussion of how we ensure the quality and credibility of publicly funded research in the future.

A renowned scholar of Islam accused of “questionable research practices” by two Danish researchers. There is just one problem

Two Danish researchers levelled grave, sweeping and defamatory accusations against the author of a book on the infiltration of Western societies by the Muslim Brotherhood. I examined their examination, and I give here three examples of their modus operandi.

Editor’s note. This second op-ed by Tina Magaard was published in Danish in Berlingske (Kronikker section) on 14 September 2026, under the title “Berømt islamforsker blev beskyldt for „tvivlsom forskningspraksis” af to danske forskere. Der er bare et problem”: www.berlingske.dk/kronikker/beroemt-islamforsker-blev-beskyldt-for-tvivlsom-forskningspraksis-af-to-danske-forskere-der-er-bare-et-problem

By Tina Magaard, PhD, former associate professor at Aarhus University, integration consultant. Translated from the Danish.

In a column published in Berlingske on 13 August, Pierre Collignon warns against “what can happen when an extreme ideology takes power in the academic world”. Collignon takes the British University of Cambridge as his case, but is the question just as relevant in a Danish context?

As an example worth reflecting on, I would like to recall a case that Berlingske itself once reported.

A case in which Professor Lene Kühle, of Aarhus University, and senior researcher Manni Crone, of the DIIS (Danish Institute for International Studies), approached Berlingske with an examination of the book by the French anthropologist Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, Broderismen - How Islamists Undermine Western Societies.

On the basis of this examination, Kühle and Crone made “grave accusations” of “questionable research practices” against Bergeaud-Blackler in Berlingske.

In their examination, they themselves refer to the law on scientific dishonesty, which underlines the seriousness of their accusations.

In Berlingske, however, Kühle and Crone quickly slide towards sweeping and defamatory accusations, of the kind: “In my entire academic career, I have never seen anything like it. It is truly staggering”, or again: “When an author, to such a preponderant degree, fails to handle their material correctly, it undermines the credibility of the entire work.”

There is just one problem.

I examined the examination carried out by Kühle and Crone of Broderismen - How Islamists Undermine Western Societies, and my alarm bells quickly began to ring.

I found that Kühle and Crone’s accusations themselves moved into the semantic fields that the law on scientific dishonesty defines as questionable research practices, or even as scientific dishonesty. I am not a lawyer, so my assessment is not a legal one.

But when I transpose the concepts of the law on scientific dishonesty into my own original discipline, philology, they work like a photographic developer of what Kühle and Crone are really doing.

For the readers of Berlingske I have selected three examples directly linked to the interview that Berlingske had initially published with Kühle and Crone.

Example 1

In Broderismen - How Islamists Undermine Western Societies, Bergeaud-Blackler refers to a link which Kühle and Crone claim leads “to a website that in reality leads to a secret dating site giving access to pornographic material”. But is what Kühle and Crone say correct?

According to the Wayback Machine, in 2022 (the year in which Bergeaud-Blackler was writing her book) one found the content to which she refers. But in the autumn of 2024 (that is, roughly at the time of Kühle and Crone’s “examination”), the site redirected to another domain (thedatinghouse.xyz).

In the Wayback Machine’s archives for this link, one sees a scam-looking page containing a single image. The image shows the face, shoulder and arm of a young woman, bare-backed above. There is nothing “pornographic” in this image, and the site does not give “access to pornographic material”.

If Kühle and Crone maintain their accusation that the link led to pornographic content, they must produce the documentation for it.

If they cannot, this raises an unpleasant suspicion: did Kühle and Crone themselves fabricate fictitious data? For the record, the law on scientific dishonesty defines the fabrication of fictitious data as amounting to scientific dishonesty.

I repeat, I am not a lawyer and cannot therefore provide a legal assessment of this example. But I can point out its semantic overlap and pose the question: what do we expect of the level of rigour of publicly funded research?

The accusation that Bergeaud-Blackler linked to a pornographic site is plainly liable to undermine her credibility. In a second stage, this accusation may have the effect of turning readers away from the book and from the documentation it presents. What might this have meant for our collective sharing of knowledge about Islamic normative pressure and infiltration?

Example 2

Are Kühle and Crone even competent, scientifically speaking, to pronounce on the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood?

In Berlingske, they reproach Bergeaud-Blackler with an “erroneous designation of the notion of ‘greater jihad’ as being the ‘violent’ jihad, whereas it is in reality the notion of ‘lesser jihad’”. Are Kühle and Crone manipulating the reader into believing that this interpretation is shared by the Muslim Brotherhood, or are they simply abysmally ignorant of the field on which they pronounce? It is for them to account for that.

The fact is that the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, made it his mission to combat precisely the interpretation of the notion of jihad that Kühle and Crone present as the correct one. Al-Banna writes in his work The Way of Jihad:

“Many Muslims today wrongly believe that fighting the enemy is the lesser jihad and that fighting one’s ego is the greater jihad.”

Al-Banna thus clearly rejects the interpretation of jihad defended by Kühle and Crone. Al-Banna holds that “all Muslims” are bound to armed jihad. He supports his position with quotations from the Quran and the hadiths, for example a passage establishing that going to battle is worth more than seventy years of prayer.

In the twenty-first century, this position is found in the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief ideologue and star television preacher Youssef al-Qaradawi: “Taking one’s place in the ranks of the fighters is better than praying at home for sixty years.”

On al-Qaradawi’s Arabic-language site, one finds the fatwa “Martyrdom operations are the highest form of jihad”, in which he describes the suicide attack as “one of the legitimate acts of terror of which the Quran speaks”.

This does not mean that al-Qaradawi holds that all Muslims must engage in violent jihad here and now. According to him, it should be done only when it is realistic to prevail.

Kühle and Crone thus mislead the reader by giving the impression that the “peaceful” interpretation of the notion of jihad is unanimous among Muslims, whereas the Brotherhood’s principal ideologues reject precisely this interpretation and maintain that armed combat is the greatest jihad.

This is a worrying piece of disinformation on the part of Kühle and Crone, for it hampers our ability to assess a possible future potential for violence within the frérist currents of Islam.

Example 3: the double standard

In Berlingske, Kühle and Crone reproach Bergeaud-Blackler with “erroneous and incomplete references”. For example “missing page numbers” in 28 per cent of her notes.

But Bergeaud-Blackler does nothing, in her popular book, that Kühle and Crone do not do themselves in their scholarly publications. In Kühle’s book Danmarks moskéer: mangfoldighed og samspil (The Mosques of Denmark: Diversity and Interaction), page numbers are missing in 51 of the 283 references I examined. That is 18 per cent.

In Crone’s article Roots, trees, and the re-enchantment of nature: the French new right’s eco-political utopia, page numbers are missing in 50 of the 55 references to books or articles. In other words, Crone is missing page numbers in 89 per cent of her references. The missing page numbers in 28 per cent of Bergeaud-Blackler’s references pale in comparison.

Conclusion

I have given here three examples of Kühle and Crone’s modus operandi. In an in-depth analysis, one can find seven further procedures they resort to. If one has criticisms to make, I would wish them to start from my in-depth analysis, for an op-ed can give only an overview, not the full examination.

In the original article published in Berlingske, Kühle and Crone made grave accusations of questionable research practices against Bergeaud-Blackler. But what do Kühle and Crone themselves do?

The law on scientific dishonesty defines “questionable research practices” as a “violation of the generally recognised norms of responsible research practice”. Do Kühle and Crone themselves meet the “recognised norms of responsible research practice” in their respective research communities? It would be legitimate to require the DIIS and Aarhus University to pronounce on this question.

Danish society has entrusted Kühle and Crone with positions of trust, as professor and as senior researcher, at Aarhus University and the Danish Institute for International Studies respectively.

An aura of credibility surrounds these titles and these institutions. This credibility can be maintained only if every researcher contributes to it.

Tina Magaard holds a doctorate, is a former associate professor at Aarhus University and an integration consultant.