British MP warns a UK ban on Brotherhood ‘could aid al-Qaeda’

A British Conservative MP warned on Tuesday that an inquiry into Muslim Brotherhood, ordered by British Prime Minister David Cameron, “could aid al-Qaeda.”

In comments to The Telegraph, Crispin Blunt, a former justice minister, said the inquiry could backfire if the organization was wrongly identified as having links to terror.

“The worst possible thing would be a fit-up job that listed the Muslim Brotherhood on the terrorist list with little or no evidence. It would be a betrayal of our values and make the problem worse.”

Blunt said Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states felt a direct political threat from the Brotherhood.

“A misapplied policy could drive its followers into the arms of al-Qaeda,” he said, adding that Britain had a duty to determine that its leadership was not instigating or planning violent actions in Egypt or elsewhere.

The review is being conducted by Sir John Jenkins, the British ambassador in Riyadh. The inquiry is due to report findings by the end of Parliament’s summer recess, according to the newspaper.

According to Abdallah Hamoud, an Egyptian political analyst based in London, the group works "among British Muslims in order to mobilize pressure against the government to take measures against the interim government in Cairo.

"The Muslim Brotherhood organization in the UK is planning to bring about some kind of radicalization effect among British Muslims," he said, adding that "the British government is starting to feel the impact of this, particularly after news is rife of British Muslims participating in the war in Syria, threatening Britain's national security."

"To have London as a hub for Islamists will take the scene back to the early 1990s where the breeding, long-term effect of radicals didn't initially pose an immediate threat, but later did."