muslims are motivated, dedicated and well funded.
Most of the West appears to be apathetic and ignorant.
The Bank Al Taqwa
During his first decade in Europe Egyptian Tariq Ramadan also found time to create the Islamische Gemeinschaft Deutschland (Islamic Society of Germany, or ISG) and served as its president from 1958-1968. Following Rmadan, the ISG presidency was assumed by the Pakistani Fazal Yazdani, and then by Ali Ghaleb Himmat, a Syrian with Italian citizenship, who would be a founder of the Bank Al Taqwa (Fear of God), a Swiss/Bahamian#based financial network and Ikhwan-dominated Bank established in 1988 with financing from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It was generally called “The Ikhwan Bank.” (”The United States and Italy Designate Twenty#Five New Financiers of Terror,” Department of the Treasury Office of Public Affairs, Washington D.C., 29 August 2002.)
Also involved in the Bank Al Taqwa was Yusuf Nada, yet another expatriate with a long history of association with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere. He surrounded himself with Ikhwan, and the Chairman of Al Taqwa’s Swiss board of directors was Muslim Brother Mohammed Mansur. Nada had joined the armed branch of te Muslim Brotherhood as a young man in Egypt during World War II, and it was later reported that he had helped the Mufti make his post-war flight from Germany to Jerusalem. Arrested in Egypt in 1954, Nada soon fled his homeland and began a career in Libya during the reign of the deeply religious and Sanoussi Brotherhood leader King Idris. For reasons never made public, in 1965 the Egyptian government tried Nada in absentia and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
When Colonel Qaddafi seized power in Libya in 1969, Nada fled once again, this time to Austria where he soon made a fortune wholesaling building materials. And it was in Austria that Nada for the first time became interested in banking. He formed a business relationship with the CA Bankverein of Vienna, and as a banker employed strict Islamist principles — one of the first Muslims to do so in Europe. According to a German report, in 1970 Nada approached wealthy principles in Saudi Arabia, and with the help of Egyptian Muslim brothers his Austrian firm opened an outlet in Riyadh. Nada then remained active in Arab banking, and in Egypt helped open one of that nation’s first Islamic banks.
After Nada transferred his company from Austria to Campione d’Italia at Lake Lugano in 1975 he took Italian nationality. He then created the Al Taqwa Bank citing its headquarters in the Bahamas to benefit from favorable banking laws and tax exemptions. In doing so, Nada bought full page spreads in Egyptian newspapers, broadcasting that he was opening an Islamic bank and displaying the names of 500 Muslim personages who, the ad claimed, had already opened an account with Al Taqwa. Included were a large number of Ikhwan. From then on Nada would divide his time between his commercial operations and Islamic banking.(Translation from the German: “Report: Al-Taqwa Finance Company Searched”, Neuen Zurcher Zeitung, (http://www.nzz.ch), 8 November 2001.)