Lorenzo G. Vidino is an Italian-American writer on Islamism in Europe and North America, with a special focus on the Muslim Brotherhood. Since June 2015, he has headed the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security's Program on Extremism.[1]
Prior to his current role, he held positions at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the RAND Corporation, and the Center for Security Studies (ETH Zurich). From 2016 to 2018, he served as Italy’s Coordinator of the National Commission on Jihadist Radicalization, under the governments of Matteo Renzi and Paolo Gentiloni.
Vidino has written two books about the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (2010)[2] and The Closed Circle: Joining and Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (2020),[3] both published by Columbia University Press.[4][5]
Some critics have claimed that Vidino's research "promotes conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and the United States" and leads to the criminalization of Muslim civil society. This criticism was levied by the Bridge Initiative, a research group housed at Georgetown's Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.[6]
In 2014, Vidino served as an expert for the UK government’s official review of the Muslim Brotherhood.[7]
In 2016–17, Vidino coordinated Italy's National Commission on Jihadist Radicalization, appointed by then-prime minister Matteo Renzi.[14][15]
In 2018, Vidino was hired by Mario Brero, owner of a Swiss private intelligence agency, to share information on alleged Muslim Brotherhood operatives in Europe. The intelligence firm, Alp Services, reportedly collected this information as part of a "smear campaign" for one of its clients, the government of the United Arab Emirates. This was revealed during the Abu Dhabi Secrets. In 2020, Vidino also allegedly provided derogatory information to a British journalist on behalf of Alp about the NGO Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW). By April 2020, according to The New Yorker, Brero had paid Vidino more than thirteen thousand euros.[8] The information was included in a report by The Times that showed a pattern of antisemitic social media posting by one of IRW's trustees.[16]
IRW acknowledged the authenticity and problematic nature of the posts, issued a formal apology, and removed the trustee. The following month, they announced that their entire board of trustees would resign and be replaced.[17] An independent UK commission headed by former attorney general Dominic Grieve concluded in 2021 that new policies and the existing code of conduct should prevent similar problems from recurring.[18] Meanwhile, based on a review of the evidence, the governments of Germany[19] and the Netherlands[20] stopped funding IRW, and the US issued a public condemnation of the organization's antisemitic remarks.[21]
As of 2021, Vidino served as advisor to the Austrian Documentation Center for Political Islam, an organization that co-published a highly disputed "Islam map", an overview of locations and affiliations of more than 600 mosques and Muslim associations in Austria.[22]
Writing
Vidino has written four books, a number of congressional testimonies, and numerous articles in several prominent newspapers and academic journals.[23] His main subject is the Muslim Brotherhood, which he describes as "a modern day Trojan horse engaged in a sort of stealth subversion aimed at weakening Western society from within."[24]
An investigative article appeared in The New Yorker in March 2023 about Vidino's connections to the private intelligence agency Alp Services, which had previously been contracted by the United Arab Emirates. According to the article, he was invited to Geneva in January 2018 for a "thousand-dollar dinner" in order to recruit him as a consultant for the agency. Two weeks later, Vidino signed a contract worth 3,000 euros with Mario Brero in exchange for information about the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. In addition, according to David D. Kirkpatrick of The New Yorker, Vidino promised to pass on information he received from European intelligence agencies. The next month, Vidino wrote that "many of the names on the list come indeed straight from various meetings with German intel." In total, as of April 2020, Vidino had billed 13,000 euros for his work.[25]
According to the news magazine Profil, Vidino supplied rumors, company names, investigation documents, and lists of names of suspected members of the Muslim Brotherhood in a total of 13 countries.[26]
The French newspaper Mediapart also has also written about the connections between Vidino and the UAE. It has mentioned that Vidino appears as an expert on the website of the Emirati think tank Trends Research.[27] According to the Austrian magazine Profil, Vidino also sits on the Abu Dhabi-based think tank Hedayah, which is mainly chaired by representatives of the ruling family.[28]
Der Spiegel published an investigation in July 2023, stating that Alp Services benefited from the fact that Vidino was able to establish contacts with quality media. Information received by Alp Services from Vidino was subsequently forwarded to the UAE intelligence services. These lists included Nawaf Salam, German local politicians, and members of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany. Internal Alp Services documents also include correspondence with Christoph de Vries, a member of the German Bundestag. In response to a question from Der Spiegel, de Vries explained that he had been deceived about the true identity of Alp Services.[29]
Under the leadership of the EIC, more than 13 media outlets from 13 countries have now published research on Vidino on this subject, under the name "Abu Dhabi Secrets". These include Radio Télévision Suisse, Le Soir, and NRC Handelsblad.[30]
A result of this reporting has been that two scholars, Hilary Matfess and Cynthia Millier-Idriss (professor of sociology at American University), have distanced themselves from Vidino.[31]Beatrice de Graaf, a professor at Utrecht University, followed in July 2023.[32]
Critical reception
Vidino’s work has received a mix of acclaim and criticism. John Jenkins, who in 2014 led the UK government review of the Muslim Brotherhood, said that “Lorenzo Vidino is a distinguished scholar of the Muslim Brotherhood. In The Closed Circle, he provides the invaluable service of letting those who have left the movement speak for themselves. What they say should enlighten and alarm anyone who thinks the Brotherhood is moderate, a firewall against extremism, or genuinely committed to democratic pluralism. Policy makers need to read it—and then read it again.”[33]
American journalist Graeme Wood said that "Vidino's interviews reveal a patient organization that markets itself as moderate but sometimes acts like a sinister and dangerous cult. The Brotherhood requires subtle analysis, and Vidino provides just that—neither overstating its threat nor accepting its claims to be a benign fraternal order. An essential contribution to our understanding of Islamism in the West."[33]
Salafism expert Shiraz Maher stated: “This book is the first of its kind. Well-conceived and highly original, the Closed Circle provides a new analytical framework for thinking about and conceptualizing the reasons for why people have chosen to leave the Muslim Brotherhood.”[33]
One review of his 2020 book, The Closed Circle: Joining and Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, which features interviews with six former Brotherhood members in Western countries, noted the "misplaced" suspicion Vidino puts on the Brotherhood and contested his claim that the Brotherhood seeks the gradual creation of a caliphate.[34]
Islamic scholar Reinhard Schulze, a professor at the university of Bern, has repeatedly criticized Vidino on Twitter: "In the controversy about the Muslim Brotherhood, much is reminiscent of radical conspiracy-theoretical submissions with which Freemasons, socialists, and communists were fought in the 19th century. Lorenzo Vidino wraps them here in a pseudo-scientific garment in order to 'prove' that a small 'leadership clique' (30 people) is acting 'underground' to destabilize Central European society and to disseminate 'background content for assassins'. He sees the Muslim Brotherhood as a secret society that wants to infiltrate not only Islam but the West in general. Such absurd allegations obscure politicians' view of the problems associated with the crisis caused by religious disintegration. A policy that seeks to counteract this disintegration does not need heavily right-wing stereotypical conspiracy theories but rather a broad civil society alliance of both Muslim and non-Muslim institutions and personalities that helps counteract religious disintegration through targeted programs".[35]
In April 2020, the Bridge Initiative of Georgetown University published a comprehensive fact sheet about Vidino, claiming that his "research promotes conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and the United States".[6] The initiative's associate director, Mobashra Tazamal, stated on Twitter that Vidino's work "has been used to justify the criminalization of Muslim civil society across Europe".[36] In the tweet, Tazamal referred to the Austrian government's use of Vidino's work to justify Operation Luxor, the largest police operation in Austria since 1945 (later declared "unlawful" by the courts), which raided the homes of nearly seventy families active in Austrian Muslim associations, including Farid Hafez, a professor at Salzburg and Georgetown who researches and publishes on Islamophobia. In response to criticism, Vidino stated in a September 2022 interview with Wiener Zeitung: "If my work is flawed and has caused you damage, why don't you sue me? It's just general criticism, personal attacks and empty legal threats; that's quite revealing to me."[37] Anas Schakfeh, former president of the Islamic Religious Community in Austria, commented that "U.S. residents can hardly be sued in Austria". In addition, he asked whether "not being sued proves the claim wrong".[38] Muslim Youth Austria (MJÖ) refrained from filing a lawsuit because Vidino resides in the US, and thus a lawsuit in Austria is "practically impossible". In addition, MJÖ cited a decision of the Higher Regional Court of Graz, in which it is stated that the "assessment in the Scholz/Heinisch expert opinion, which is based, among other things, on the Vidino study and afterthoughts, is inadequate as evidence".[39]
^"Wenn meine Arbeit fehlerhaft ist und ihnen Schaden zugefügt hat: Warum verklagen sie mich dann nicht? Es handelt sich nur um allgemeine Kritik, persönliche Angriffe und leere rechtliche Drohungen: Das ist für mich ziemlich enthüllend." Daniel Bischof: "Muslimbrüder verbreiten ein Opfernarrativ"Wiener Zeitung, 29. September 2022.
