Political Islam: A Hybrid Threat to Europe

Key points

• The book applies the apparatus of hybrid conflicts to the Muslim Brotherhood (JRC/Giannopoulos 2019, Schmid Bundeswehr, ISGAP).
• Europe is diagnosed as being in phase 2 (Preparation-Influence), with slippages toward phase 3 (Destabilization).
• France is said to have already crossed the phase 3 threshold in several domains - unlike Austria.

1. Presentation and context of the book

The book, co-signed by Heiko Heinisch and Nina Scholz - a pair of Viennese historians and political scientists who have worked for some fifteen years on Islamism in the German-speaking world - and by Gustav E. Gustenau - a senior Austrian civil servant from the world of strategic foresight and defense - reflects an uncommon exercise in disciplinary convergence: the study of the Muslim Brotherhood movement is carried out here jointly by expertise drawn from the social study of European Islamism and by the tools of the theory of hybrid conflicts developed within European security institutions (Bundeswehr, JRC, SWP).

The book continues and broadens the investigation that Scholz and Heinisch had already delivered in Alles für Allah. Wie der politische Islam unsere Gesellschaft verändert (Vienna, 2019) and follows in the wake of the work carried out in Vienna within the Dokumentationsstelle Politischer Islam (DPI).

The title itself condenses the book's thesis: applying to the Muslim Brotherhood movement the category of hybrid threat (hybride Bedrohung), until now mainly used to analyze state actors (Russia, China, Iran) or violent non-state actors (armed jihadism). The subtitle takes up the movement cadres' internal expression - Civilization Jihadist Process - drawn from the famous Explanatory Memorandum by Akram Adlouni, written in 1991 for the North American branch and seized during the Holy Land Foundation trial.

2. Architecture and structure of the book

It must be said at the outset: the architecture of this book is singular, even disconcerting at first sight. The reader who opens the table of contents is confronted with a structure unusual in social-science literature: thirteen sections designated by letters (A-M), a central part (chapter G) that on its own takes up more than a third of the volume and repeats the same list of eleven identically numbered domains of action - then a chapter H that again repeats this list for two alternative options, and finally a chapter I that repeats it a third time for the Austrian case.

This singularity is not, however, a flaw: it is the mode of exposition proper to a matrix-based strategic analysis. It is precisely because the book takes the form of a matrix (and not of a linear narrative) that one must decode its architecture before approaching its content.

Once this key is in hand, the architecture becomes clear: the book unfolds over thirteen sections (A-M) that combine a conceptual part (A-E), an analytical grid of eleven domains of action (F), a longitudinal deployment across five phases (G), a two-branch alternative scenario (H), a case study applied to Austria (I), a strategic mapping (J) and three concluding sections (K, L, M).

The strength of this architecture lies in the 5 phases × 11 domains matrix grid: for each strategic phase of the movement, the authors run through the eleven identified domains of action. This gives the reader a systematic matrix - which, let us note at once, is also the way in which the Muslim Brotherhood's own internal strategic documents (the “Project” of 1982, the Memorandum of 1991) conceive and project themselves.

The eleven domains of action retained are: (1) Culture, civilization and ideology; (2) Internal organization; (3) Muslim population; (4) Society as a whole; (5) Education; (6) State and public institutions; (7) Communication; (8) Economy; (9) Cooperation and alliances; (10) Opponents of Islamism; (11) Means of warfare.

On the methodological level (chapter E, p. 43-46), the book relies on the SPHEERE method developed by the EICTP (European Institute for Counter-Terrorism and Conflict Prevention), which combines strategic risk management and conflict analysis. Its transposition to non-state actors is one of the most innovative methodological moves in the book.

Four steps structure it: analysis of the strategic field and selection of the eleven domains, formulation of possible options for action in each domain, grouping of the options into coherent strategic scenarios by morphological box, and visualization via a strategic map. Its theoretical grounding (Fink/Siebe, Szenario-Management, 2016) strengthens the study against charges of essayism. This toolkit is today absent from the equivalent French apparatus (SGDSN, CIPDR, DGSI): its adoption would make it possible to move beyond an analysis by isolated events to a systemic strategic analysis.

3. Central theses of the excerpt

3.1. A multi-generational project of civilizational transformation

The introduction sets out, as its opening thesis, that the Muslim Brotherhood's engagement in Western democracies is not an opportunistic accumulation of civic, charitable, educational and economic initiatives, but a coherent political project:

This thesis is then supported by the movement's own corpus: Hassan al-Banna's programmatic text “To the Youth” (a seven-phase plan toward the submission of the world to the “message of Islam”), the Muslim Brotherhood's 1982 strategic document - known as “The Project” - which formulates the objective of “establishing Islamic domination over the Earth,” and the Memorandum of Akram Adlouni (1991), from which the authors extract the following quotation:

The generational project is illustrated once again by the quotation from Youssef al-Qaradawi, the movement's leading thinker until his death in 2022:

3.2. Hybridity as a key to interpretation

The book's key concept is that of the hybrid threat:

• a hybridity of approach (a combination of legal/illegal, regular/irregular, civilian/military, overt/covert means);
• a hybridity of structure (a hierarchical core of cadres, front organizations, satellites, ideologically influenced individuals, state backers - Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey).

It must be stressed that this conceptual framework is not an original creation of the three authors: it is explicitly borrowed from a specific body of European literature on hybrid conflicts.

3.3. The main theoretical borrowings on hybridity

The specific contribution of Heinisch, Scholz and Gustenau lies in the - methodologically difficult - move of transposing a conceptual apparatus drawn from European security studies to a non-state actor with a “civilizational” vocation.

Four lines of descent are explicitly acknowledged:

• Giannopoulos, Smith, Theocharidou (The Landscape of Hybrid Threats, JRC Technical Reports, 2019, notes 6, 18, 19) - the pivotal framework: a model of actors, the notion of domains (from which the authors derive their eleven-domain grid), the notion of tools, and above all the four-phase escalation logic that forms the backbone of chapter G;
• Johann Schmid (Bundeswehr, ISPSW, texts 2021-2023, notes 12, 14, 15) - the qualitative vocabulary of hybridity: “grey zones of the interfaces,” “mosaic warfare,” “multidomain warfare,” the idea that hybridity is defined by the deliberately ambiguous combination of instruments;

The three authors' contribution consists in articulating these traditions within a single 11 × 5 matrix and applying it to the case of the European Muslim Brotherhood movement. It is, to my knowledge, the first European book to achieve this synthesis.

3.4. The four phases of the hybrid attack applied to the Muslim Brotherhood

Taking up directly the four-phase escalation logic developed by Giannopoulos, Smith and Theocharidou (JRC 2019, p. 36-42, cited explicitly in note 19 p. 21), the authors propose the following transposition to the Muslim Brotherhood case:

• Preparation-Interference (Priming-Interference): identification of systemic vulnerabilities, establishment of influence networks, dissemination of targeted narratives, gradual habituation of target societies to a heightened level of external influence.
• Preparation-Influence (Priming-Influence): systematic exploitation of the lessons drawn from the previous phase to shape perceptions, interpretive frameworks and decision-making logics.
• Destabilization (Destabilization): coordinated propaganda, disinformation campaigns, polarization, economic or legal pressure, targeted provocations, the exacerbation of conflict lines, delegitimization of state actors.
• Coercion (Coercion) - the seizure-of-power phase: the shift from indirect influence to the targeted imposition of political or strategic decisions, up to the threat or use of open violence.

The authors' diagnosis - as it emerges from the general framing, from their Austrian case studies and from consultations with European experts (of whom I was one) - is that the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Europe is today essentially in phase 2 (Preparation-Influence, Priming-Influence), with elements of slippage toward phase 3 (Destabilization) in certain national contexts.

Phase 2 is the one that, paradoxically, appears the most benign because it mobilizes:

3.5. The analogy with the Cold War

Chapter B opens with an explicit parallel between the Muslim Brotherhood threat and the communist challenge of the 20th century. The comparison is analytical, not polemical: it targets the form of the conflict - ideological, systemic, long-term - and not an equivalence of contents:

The authors draw here on John Lenczowski (Political-Ideological Warfare in Integrated Strategy) and on the ISGAP report on the movement's systemic entryism in the United States (2025). The analogy seeks to grasp what, in the Muslim Brotherhood approach, escapes the usual categories of security: not immediate military decision, but “the strategic erosion of the conceptions of democratic order from within, through cultural hegemony, normative shifts and long-term changes of loyalty” (p. 17).

4. Domains of action

Chapter F (p. 47-59) provides the eleven-domain analytical grid that structures the entire second half of the book. The authors identify eleven subsystems in which the Muslim Brotherhood can exert direct influence and which, crossed with the five strategic phases of chapter G, form the central matrix of the book. For each domain, a strategic objective is formulated and the organizations or mechanisms that operationalize it are named.

The first domain (p. 47-48) is ideological: it concerns the “civilizational jihad” (civilization jihad), an expression the authors take from the 1991 Adlouni memorandum and break down into five internal stages (Settlement, Establishment, Stability, Enablement, Rooting). The book nominally attaches to this domain the triptych of vision-utopia / identity / plan that I proposed in Le Frérisme et ses réseaux (note 92, p. 47).

Domains 2 and 3 (p. 48-51) concern the actor itself: the transnational organization (cadres, cover structures, the web of Muslim Brotherhood institutions FIOE/CEM, FEMYSO, ECFR, IESH), then the Muslim population as the primary target, to be organized around a collective Islamic identity.

Domains 4 to 7 (p. 51-55) describe action on the social subsystems: society as a whole (cultural hegemony, in an explicitly Gramscian reading), education (from the Quranic class to the university), the state and its institutions (external lobbying combined with internal infiltration), and communication (media, interfaith dialogue, a monopoly of interpretation over Islam, the systematic instrumentalization of the term “Islamophobia”).

Domains 8 and 9 (p. 55-57) concern the economy (halal certification, associative real estate via EMUG/Zayat/IGMG, Qatar-Kuwait-Turkey flows) and cooperation and alliances, both state (Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey, Iran) and civil (ENAR, left-wing parties, Churches, trade unions). Domain 10 (p. 57-58) covers the opponents of Islamism and the disqualification mechanisms aimed at them.

The eleventh and last domain (p. 58-59) is that of “means of warfare”: in the phase currently observed, these are essentially legal (lawfare), media and informational tools, coupled with what the authors call the “arsonist and firefighter” role - the same organizations embedding themselves in the very prevention and deradicalization schemes they indirectly feed. The archetypal example chosen is the Samuel Paty case (p. 59), read as a chain of public designation → intimidation → violence.

The authors finally recall the movement's historic symbol: two crossed swords beneath the Quran and the exhortation “Be ready!”.

These eleven domains constitute the entry key to the entire analysis; they are systematically taken up in chapter G (phase by phase), in chapter H (alternative options) and in chapter I (Austrian case).

5. The strategic options of the Muslim Brotherhood

Chapter G (p. 61-170) applies the matrix scheme. It crosses the eleven domains of action defined in chapter F with the five strategic phases drawn from the Giannopoulos framework (Preparation-Establishment, Preparation-Influence, Destabilization, Confrontation, Seizure of power).

5.1. Phase 1 - Preparation and establishment (1950s-1980s)

This phase corresponds to the arrival and discreet establishment of the Brotherhood in Europe. Europe is not yet a target; it is a refuge from which to support the Brotherhood persecuted in the countries of origin. The eleven domains of action are surveyed below.

(1) Civilizational jihad - the guiding line is concealment: a public presentation in conformity with the democratic order, ideological objectives communicated only internally, no mention in the reports of European security services. The Brotherhood positions itself as a potential ally against Soviet influence during the Cold War, which earns it state backing, notably Libyan support for the Munich mosque.

(2) Organization - this is the most developed domain of the phase. Islamic centers are founded in Geneva, Munich, Aachen and Frankfurt around Saïd Ramadan, al-Banna's son-in-law. The Muslim Students' Association (MSV) is born in Munich in 1964. The Islamic Council of Europe is created in the United Kingdom in 1973, with Ramadan on the executive committee. In Austria, Himmat and Nada create in 1962 the Muslim Social Service, from which the Islamic Religious Community (IGGÖ) will emerge in 1979, recognized by the state as an umbrella organization. Milli Görüş takes shape within the Turkish community in the early 1970s and cooperates from the outset with the Brotherhood networks.

(3) Muslim population - the Brotherhood becomes the pivot between the emerging communities and the institutions; it seeks to establish itself as an exclusive representative body, which prompts the first internal challenges as early as the 1980s (notably in Austria, around the IGGÖ).

(4) Society as a whole, (5) education, (6) state and public institutions - these three domains remain little invested during the phase. Social action is limited to universities and a few municipal projects; teaching is limited to Quranic and Arabic classes in mosques; the state is approached only to obtain administrative authorizations and to overcome bureaucratic obstacles.

(7) Communication - the apparatus is turned inward toward the communities, with two founding outlets: the German-language newspaper Al-Islam (1958, which became the organ of the Islamic Center of Munich) and the Arabic-language magazine Majallat al-Muslimin founded by Ramadan in Geneva in 1959.

(8) Economy - from the outset the Brotherhood makes sure to own its centers (Munich, Aachen, Frankfurt), laying the foundations of a European real-estate patrimony. Youssef Nada, settled in Austria at the end of the 1960s, starts a network of businesses between the Middle East and Europe, which will extend into the financial sector at the end of the 1980s.

(9) Cooperation and alliances - financial support comes mainly from Saudi Arabia (then favorable), Kuwait, Bahrain, Lebanon and Turkey; civil alliances with parties, NGOs and other religions are still nonexistent. (10) Opponents of Islamism - no structured action against Western adversaries at this stage; at most the ousting of the non-Brotherhood initiators of the Munich mosque project, a sign of an early will to internal control. (11) Means of warfare - no violent action in Europe; violence remains confined to support for jihadist groups in the countries of origin, notably in Egypt and Syria.

By the end of the phase, the Brotherhood has built in Europe a modest but coherent infrastructure and has placed itself, without the host states perceiving it, at the head of the nascent organized Islam.

5.2. Phase 2 - Preparation and exercise of influence (1980s to today)

This phase corresponds to the shift from a posture of discreet establishment to an active strategy of influence, without recourse to violence. It is the phase currently observed in Europe, marked out by the internal strategic documents of 1982 and 1991, supplemented in 1995 by al-Qaradawi's book Priorities of The Islamic Movement and his fiqh of minorities. The eleven domains of action are surveyed below.

(1) Civilizational jihad - the declared objectives are support for the global Islamic state, infiltration of parties, NGOs and institutions, and the monopolization of the themes of integration, discrimination, “Islamophobia” and “anti-Muslim racism.”

(2) Organization - a founding fever at the 1980-1990 turn: UOIF in France (1983), FIOE in 1989 (which became CEM in 2020), the IESH of Château-Chinon (1992), FEMYSO (1996), the Dublin ECFR chaired by al-Qaradawi (1997). The European Muslim Brotherhood network today comprises about two hundred organizations.

(3) Muslim population - the Brotherhood seeks to constitute Europe's Muslims into a separate identity community and to place its norm under its own authority. The ECFR's fatwas impose halal/haram segregation and lend credence to the death penalty for apostasy.

(4) Society as a whole - the strategy rests on the patient exploitation of what Taleb calls the “tyranny of the small minority”: the majority society is not coerced, it is conditioned to accept minority norms presented as rights. This is, in my view, the most decisive lever and the hardest to counter by classic legal responses.

(5) Education - a Brotherhood infrastructure of its own (the IESH and its branches, the Austrian IRPA, faith schools in Belgium and Germany) and a Qatari lever via Education City in Doha (since 1997), which hosts HEC Paris and several major American and British universities.

(6) State and public institutions - a dual effort of lobbying (EU transparency register, FEMYSO, CCIE) and institutional penetration. The French ban on the CCIF in December 2020, following the murder of Samuel Paty, was immediately circumvented by relocation to Brussels under the name CCIE - an emblematic example of the apparatus's European adaptability. The actors seek to delegitimize any form of state control in the fight against Islamic terrorism, presenting it as discrimination against Muslims and a racist attack on them.

(7) Communication - a coherent media architecture around Al Jazeera (since 1996), IslamOnline, Middle East Eye (London 2014) and the Qatar Media City under construction. The post-September 11 discourse-reframing strategy segments audiences (governments, majority society, moderate Muslims, fundamentalists, the postcolonial left, etc.) and tailors messages by segment.

(8) Economy - a massive charitable and financial apparatus structured around Europe Trust (Leicestershire), Islamic Relief Deutschland (subsidized by the German government) and the IRW of Birmingham (supported by the EU). The European halal market, estimated at 15-16 billion dollars, is a lever of gradual normalization - the conversion of KFC France to a 100% halal offering, which I commented on in FigaroVox in January 2026 and which the book cites, is an emblematic example.

(9) Cooperation and alliances - identity-based and postcolonial networks (ENAR, BDS, Students for Justice in Palestine), explicit alliances with La France insoumise on anti-racism and Palestine, state funding coming mainly from Qatar, Kuwait and, more recently, Turkey.

(10) Opponents of Islamism - organized campaigns against critical Muslims (Khorchide, Aslan, Ourghi, Ateş, Jasser, Nomani) and against researchers, through instruments such as the European Islamophobia Report by Hafez and Bayraklı, at one point co-funded by the EU before being discontinued after a European Parliament resolution in April 2021.

(11) Means of warfare - officially legalistic, but the Brotherhood knows how to instrumentalize the violence it does not itself commit. The murder of Samuel Paty is emblematic of the chain public designation → intimidation → violence: a pupil's father launches the campaign, the Brotherhood imam Sefrioui relays it, an 18-year-old Muslim decapitates the teacher on October 16, 2020, without the Brotherhood's cadres being directly compromised.

The principle of this phase is insidious erosion: transforming the democratic order by legal means, without crossing any threshold of formal rupture.

5.3. Phase 3 - Destabilization (begun in the 2010s)

This phase corresponds to the gradual erosion of the functional capacity of state and social subsystems. It begins in the 2010s, is superimposed on phase 2 without replacing it, and finds its structuring trigger in the 2015-2016 migratory flows. The Brotherhood does not need to provoke the crisis: demographic and ideological dynamics produce it; the Brotherhood networks convert them into political leverage. The eleven domains of action are surveyed below.

(1) Civilizational jihad - the articulation between declared macro-strategy and uncontrolled local dynamics is now central: it is enough for the Muslim Brotherhood to accompany the ongoing destabilization and to project its normative project onto it, without planning it.

(2) Organization - professionalization and hierarchization of the network: what functioned as a popular movement restructures into a power bloc, in line with al-Qaradawi's call to unify the “Islamic awakening” into a single front.

(3) Muslim population - the emergence of zones of alternative normative validity. “Sharia zone” signs are posted in London as early as 2011. The demography changes: the proportion of Muslims in Austria rises from about 4% in 1981 to 8.3% in 2021. The “replacement” discourse is now openly avowed from the pulpit by certain imams (for example at the Dar al Farooq in Minnesota in 2026).

(4) Society as a whole - the authors speak of a growing “Lebanonization” of urban spaces, a term I find more precise than communitarianism because it names a conflictual, and not merely additive, fragmentation. The ÖIF integration barometer of February 2025 indicates that 66% of the Austrians surveyed view coexistence with Muslims negatively.

(5) Education - this is the domain where destabilization is most measurable. In some Viennese classes, more than 80% of pupils are of immigrant background. German reports note non-Muslim children converting out of fear of harassment. The project of the “Islamization of knowledge,” formulated at the Lugano conference in 1977 and systematized by al-Faruqi and the International Institute of Islamic Thought, enters an active phase - the book cites my Kalifat for this genealogy.

(6) State and public institutions - the domain where destabilization takes on its clearest meaning. The May 2025 report of the French Interior Ministry describes the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to national cohesion. Five Brussels municipalities - including Molenbeek and Saint-Josse - are presented as confiscated zones. The British Sharia Councils, authorized since the 1980s for family law, have contributed, according to Elham Manea, to the consolidation of parallel societies. The state gradually delegates certain sovereign functions to religious intermediaries.

(7) Communication - a dominant strategy of saturating the information space, particularly visible after October 7, 2023: Al Jazeera, TRT and a nebula of Brotherhood actors massively broadcast false attributions and half-truths. I extended the analysis in an interview with Die Welt in October 2025, cited by the book.

(8) Economy - the authors recall the 2016 Saudi threat over US Treasury bonds as an illustration of democracies' vulnerability to adversarial state financial levers.

(9) Cooperation and alliances - now asymmetrical: the Brotherhood imposes its agenda, and the identity-based left-wing partners tacitly fall into line, for lack of argumentative capacity. (10) Opponents of Islamism - the campaigns against critics now extend to judges, prosecutors, civil servants and teachers.

(11) Means of warfare - the IUMS fatwa of April 2025 designates jihad against Israel as an individual duty, an incitement that blurs the boundary between legalistic jihad and armed jihad. The Lee Rigby case illustrates, in the negative, this porosity when destabilization makes movement between currents more fluid.

Phase 3 is characterized by a qualitative intensification rather than by a change of strategy: patient institutional infiltration remains the ground, and destabilization is its operational form.

5.4. Phase 4 - Confrontation (prospective)

This phase corresponds to the shift from a legalistic strategy to a coercive one. Entirely prospective, it is sketched by extrapolation from the earlier phases and from the Iranian, Egyptian and Turkish precedents. It presupposes intense political mobilization, open repression, growing recourse to violence and the systematic elimination of opponents. The eleven domains of action are surveyed below.

(1) Civilizational jihad - the Brotherhood's historic slogan, “Islam is the solution,” is reactivated. The patient infiltration carried out over forty years is now activated to take control of the machinery of the state, with decisive support from Qatar and Turkey.

(2) Organization - a major structural transformation. The horizontal network, hitherto pluralistic in appearance, tips over into a centralized and hierarchical architecture. Autonomous youth and women's organizations become integrated sections. Above all, a paramilitary structure is set up, inspired by the al-Nizam al-Khass created by al-Banna in 1940 - a dimension absent from complacent analyses of political Islam, and one that invalidates reassuring comparisons with Christian democracy.

(3) Muslim population - the Brotherhood ousts rival organizations and imposes its religious and political authority on ordinary Muslims. Dress codes, dietary rules and the observance of Ramadan become binding. In the neighborhoods under Brotherhood control, public law loses its reach.

(4) Society as a whole - urban fragmentation tips over into open confrontation. In some areas, women, sexual minorities and Jews can no longer move about freely; situations resembling a latent civil war appear.

(5) Education - the Islamization of knowledge moves from doctrinal project to offensive implementation: content deemed non-Islamic removed from curricula, paramilitary intimidation at the university, student campaigns against undesirable professors.

(6) State and public institutions - this is the domain that marks the turning point. Public authority is pushed out of the counter-societies, where internal security is taken over by the Brotherhood and its allies. The objective is a partial transfer of sovereign functions; paradoxically, the zones under Islamist control may appear as islands of relative stability within a weakened state fabric.

(7) Communication - Qatar and Turkey step up their investments in the European media, producing a homogeneous architecture aligned with Muslim Brotherhood ideology. Media that resist are intimidated.

(8) Economy - the halal sector now weighs enough to steer business decisions, including in art, culture and foreign trade. The patron states acquire stakes in strategic infrastructure; financial dependencies restrict political room for maneuver.

(9) Cooperation and alliances - partnerships with non-Islamic actors wither or submit. The alliances with the identity-based left are absorbed or neutralized, for lack of argumentative capacity to resist the normative claim.

(10) Opponents of Islamism - the pressure extends to judges, prosecutors, teachers and civil servants, with targeted attacks that serve as an exemplary warning, in the spirit of the maxim taken up by the authors: “Punish one, educate a hundred.”

(11) Means of warfare - a qualitative change. The paramilitary branch ensures the protection of the organization, acts as a law-enforcement force in the neighborhoods under control and is deployed in violent clashes. Violence, hitherto avoided or delegated, becomes a direct tool, religiously legitimized and fully integrated into strategic planning.

5.5. Phase 5 - Seizure of power (prospective)

This phase corresponds to the installation of an Islamic order and the refounding of the state on sharia. Entirely prospective for Europe, it is modeled on the Iranian precedent of 1979, the brief Egyptian interlude of 2012-2013 and the programmatic writings of Qutb. The instrumental posture toward democracy was summed up by Erdoğan in 1998: a train one gets off once the objective is reached. The eleven domains of action are surveyed below.

(1) Civilizational jihad - presented as an ordering force in the face of the crisis it helped to bring about, the Brotherhood takes over state functions, replaces the institutions, persecutes opponents and subjects the whole of society to Islamic norms.

(2) Organization - the departments integrated in phase 4 (youth, family, social affairs, health, economy, security) already functioned as a shadow government and now take control of the corresponding state institutions. The organizational architecture becomes a state apparatus.

(3) Muslim population - political Islam is elevated into a state religion. Critical or dissident Muslim currents are banned and can at best exist only underground. The training of imams and religious teachers is standardized under the aegis of the Brotherhood; an Irshad office steers Quranic teaching and Friday sermons.

(4) Society as a whole - alcohol, pork and everything considered haram disappear from public supply; cultural events contrary to moral norms are suppressed. The hijab is mandatory, homosexuality and non-Islamic ways of life are banned. Jews and Christians are formally tolerated but relegated to the status of dhimmis - second-class citizens excluded from public office; the other faiths lose their rights. This regime is not an extrapolation: it is the legal implementation of what the ECFR's fatwas already theorize in the diaspora.

(5) Education - the Islamization of knowledge is carried through to its conclusion: scientific knowledge is accepted only insofar as it does not contradict the Quran and the Sunna. Segregation between the sexes is generalized. Religious education takes the central place; the formation of a “pious generation” dear to Erdoğan becomes the avowed objective.

(6) State and public institutions - the legal system is reoriented onto sharia; a new constitution institutionally anchors the Islamic system. The Iranian precedent gives the order of magnitude (ten months after Khomeini's return). Foreign policy is put at the service of the pan-Islamic project; the state detaches itself from the Western alliance.

(7) Communication - the Islamic interpretive frameworks become the dominant discourse. Criticism is delegitimized, divergent positions defamed as hostile to Islam and repressed by the state. The remaining media serve as state media.

(8) Economy - businesses, production, imports and exports are subject to religious directives. Any economic relationship with Israel is excluded; an Islamic economic space is formed with the allied states, at the expense of relations with the West.

(9) Cooperation and alliances - partnerships with non-Islamic actors lose all tactical usefulness and are broken off. (10) Opponents of Islamism - first the resolute adversaries are eliminated, then the former allies deemed rivals or recalcitrant suffer the same fate. The Iranian revolution provides the archetype: the Tudeh party, which had supported Khomeini, was crushed in 1982 once the regime was consolidated.

(11) Means of warfare - alongside paramilitary violence in public space, the state instruments of repression are fully mobilized: prisons, internment camps, torture. The Islamic state consolidates its power and evolves, in the authors' sober formulation, toward a totalitarian dictatorship.

6. Original features and specific contributions

The book acknowledges the relevance of the concept of frérisme and of its theorization: “The term was coined by the French ethnologist Florence Bergeaud-Blackler. See: "Le Frérisme et ses réseaux, l'enquête", Paris 2023; in German: Kalifat nach Plan. Frérismus und seine Netzwerke in Europa, Tübingen 2025.” It validates and extends the conceptual distinction I developed in Le Frérisme et ses réseaux between formal membership of the Brotherhood and ideological adherence to the Brothers' project, a distinction the authors take up without ambiguity:

I read the book by Heinisch, Scholz and Gustenau as a strategic continuation of the framework I set out in Le Frérisme et ses réseaux. Where my ethnographic investigation documents the materiality of the networks, the diffusion of norms (halal, the veil, BDS, pseudo-victimhood) and the transmission-belt institutions (FIOE, FEMYSO, CEM, ECFR, etc.), the Austrian book carries out a threefold extension:

• a disciplinary broadening: from the social study of Islamism - to which I belong - toward strategic foresight and national security. The toolkit changes: it is no longer that of anthropology, but that of security studies and of foresight analysis applied to hybrid conflicts.
• a conceptual broadening: the notion of hybrid threat makes it possible to name and to equip what I had designated, from a socio-ideological angle, by the word frérisme. The two approaches are complementary: I describe the what (the norms, the actors, the networks), while Heinisch-Scholz-Gustenau describe the strategic how (the phases, the domains, the tools).
• a geographic extension: the anchored case study is Austrian (section I, p. 185 ff.), which documents a central European terrain too little covered in France and feeds the comparative mapping of European Muslim Brotherhood activity that my research network intends to build.

Beyond the convergence with the state of research, four specific contributions can be noted.

6.1. Strategic foresight

The 11 × 5 matrix is not only descriptive: it presents itself as diagnostic and prospective. It can serve to assess where a given national terrain (France, Belgium, the Netherlands) stands in the progression of the phases, and to anticipate the transitions - which corresponds to the “early strategic detection” (strategische Früherkennung) the authors advocate (p. 23). Its transposability beyond the Austrian case nevertheless remains to be tested.

6.2. The analysis of phase 2 as the most dangerous phase because it is legal

The book formulates a central point of the analysis: what qualifies the Muslim Brotherhood threat, in the current phase, is not violence but its formal legality. The strategy proceeds through the instrumental use of the very tools of liberal democracy:

And again:

This formulation is of operational interest to anyone seeking to understand the Muslim Brotherhood: it shifts the usual alternative between “ban” and “tolerance” toward a third term - democratic resilience - which recognizes the legality of the isolated acts while identifying the cumulative strategy they serve. It remains to be seen how this resilience can be translated into positive-law mechanisms without eroding civil liberties - a question the book does not address head-on.

6.3. The state dimension of support: Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey

By integrating the state backers (Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey via the AKP, ATIB, IGMG) into the very structure of the hybrid actor, the book extends the notion of hybridity beyond the state / non-state opposition.

7. Conclusion: what to make of this book?

The book proposes an articulation of three bodies of literature that had until now worked in parallel: the socio-ideological analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood (Bergeaud-Blackler, Vidino, Manea), the literature on the movement's internal strategies (Adlouni, Qaradawi, strategic documents) and the literature on hybrid conflicts (Giannopoulos et al., Schmid, Lenczowski). To my knowledge, it is the first European attempt of this kind.

The book makes it possible to think simultaneously the doctrinal coherence of the Muslim Brotherhood project and its strategic operationality in European democracies - an articulation the earlier literature lacked. The explicit reference to my work (note 8 p. 13, chap. D p. 37, chap. F p. 47, chap. I p. 185, and six other occurrences in chapter G) places the book within a conceptual lineage whose use it extends by equipping it with the tools of security studies.

Several operational lines of work can be envisaged on the basis of this framework:

• A comparative application of the 11 × 5 matrix to the main European countries (France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Italy), as an empirical counterpart to the authors' theoretical grid;
• identifying, for each country, the current state of the phase (Preparation-Interference, Preparation-Influence, Destabilization) and the transition indicators;
• articulating this diagnosis with the “early strategic detection” called for by the authors (p. 23), by offering research, civil society and public institutions a common analytical framework across the various member states;

The most consequential diagnosis, for France, is the one formulated in chapter M: France is said to have already, in several domains of action, “largely crossed” the threshold of the destabilization phase (p. 217). Austria, which only reaches this threshold, has nonetheless had since 2020 a DPI (Dokumentationsstelle Politischer Islam) attached to the Federal Office for Integration, an explicit 2025-2029 government program on religious extremism, and targeted bans (the full veil, the school veil before age 14 in 2025). France, said to be further along in the escalation, has none of these mechanisms. This lag - more threat, fewer tools - is one of the book's most decisive lessons for French public policy.

The place of this book in the reference corpus of European studies on the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam in 2026-2027 is of the first order.

Dr Florence Bergeaud-Blackler
Anthropologist, Research Fellow at the CNRS (HDR)
Founding President of CERIF - European Center for Research and Information on the Muslim Brotherhood
cerif.eu