Lorenzo G. Vidino

Lorenzo G. Vidino
Born	Italy
Nationality	Italian American
Occupations	Academic writer
Known for	Research into Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood

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, Vidino has headed the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security's Program on Extremism.

Prior to his current role, he held positions at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, 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.

He is considered to be one of the world's leading experts on the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. His two books on the topic, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (2010) and The Closed Circle: Joining and Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (2020), published by major academic publisher Columbia University Press, received substantial attention and praise. The Closed Circle was translated into French, Spanish, Arabic and Italian.

Sir 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.”

Noted writer 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.”

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.”

Some critics have claimed that his 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 leveraged by the Bridge Initiative, a research outfit housed at Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, a center founded through a $20 million donation from Saudi Arabia’s controversial Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. The center’s director, Nader Hashemicame under fire for having suggested that the Israeli Mossad could have been behind the assault against Salman Rushdie. Hashemi served on the board of advisory editors of the main journal published by UASR, a think tank set up by top Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk.

Vidino frequently consults for various governments. In 2014 he served as an expert for the UK government’s official review on the Muslim Brotherhood. He has also advised the Austrian and other European governments. In 2018, he was hired by Mario Brero, owner of a Swiss private intelligence agency, to share information on alleged Muslim Brotherhood operatives in Europe, in the words of one reporter, as part of a "smear campaign" for the government of the United Arab Emirates, for which he received at least 13,000 Euros. This was revealed during the Abu Dhabi Secrets.

The Muslim Brotherhood is considered an extremist organization and is monitored by the security services of most European countries, including France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. Vidino has stated he is proud of his role unmasking the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe.

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Career

From 2009 to 2010, Vidino was a fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center and Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar at the US Institute of Peace. In 2010–11, he was a visiting fellow at the RAND Corporation in Washington, DC, before joining ETH Zurich.

In 2014, he was a policy adviser at the European Foundation for Democracy. Since June 2015, Vidino has headed the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security's Program on Extremism.

In 2016–17, Vidino coordinated Italy's National Commission on Jihadist Radicalization, appointed by then-prime minister Matteo Renzi.

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. In 2020, Vidino also allegedly provided derogatory information to a British journalist on behalf of Alp about the NGO Islamic Relief. By April 2020, Brero had paid Vidino more than thirteen thousand euros. This became public in March 2023 in an investigate report by The New Yorker.

The information provided by Vidino against Islamic Relief has proven to be reliable and showed a pattern of antisemitic social media posting by top leaders of the organization (some of the posts can be seen here).

The publication of the screenshots in the Times of London triggered significant consequences. The first were inside IRW itself, which, acknowledging the authenticity and extremely problematic nature of the posts, first issued a formal apology and removed a trustee, then announced that the organization’s entire board of trustees had resigned. A month later, IRW recruited former UK Attorney General Dominic Grieve to head an Independent Commission into Governance and Vetting within Islamic Relief. Grieve’s commission considered the episodes regrettable and indicated that the organization had put in place “new policies on personal social media use” and a better vetting system which, together with the pre-existing IRW Code of Conduct, should prevent similar problems from occurring again. Moreover, based on a review of the evidence, the governments of Germany, the Netherlands and the United States decided to formally cut ties with IRW.

As of 2021, Vidino advised the Austrian Documentation Center for Political Islam, an organization that co-published the highly disputed "Islam map", an overview of locations and affiliations of more than 600 mosques and Muslim associations in Austria.

Work

Vidino has written three books, a number of congressional testimonies, and numerous articles in several prominent newspapers and academic journals. 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."

Critical reception

Vidino’s work has been widely acclaimed. His latest book on the Muslim Brotherhood, The Closed Circle, was translated into French, Spanish, Arabic and Italian.

Sir 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.”

Noted writer 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.”

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.”

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.

Islamic scholar Reinhard Schulze, 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".

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".The Bridge Initiative is a research outfit housed at Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, a center founded through a $20 million donation from Saudi Arabia’s controversial Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal.

The initiative's associative director, Mobashra Tazamal, stated on Twitter that Vidino's work "has been used to justify the criminalization of Muslim civil society across Europe". 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." 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". 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, the 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".

Abu Dhabi Secrets

Main article: Abu Dhabi Secrets

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 allegedly 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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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. Beatrice de Graaf, a professor at Utrecht University, followed in July 2023.

Publications

• Al Qaeda in Europe: The New Battleground of International Jihad (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)
• The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (2010)
• The Muslim Brotherhood in Austria (report, 2017)
• The Closed Circle: Joining and Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (2020)

External links

• Former official website on the Wayback Machine
• Lorenzo Vidino at the George Washington University
• The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West