Lorenzo G. Vidino

Lorenzo G. Vidino is an Italian-American writer on Islamism in Europe and North America. He was born in Milan, Italy. He holds a law degree from the University of Milan and a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.[1]

Lorenzo G. Vidino
Born
Milan, Italy
Nationality
  • Italian
  • American
Occupations
  • Academic
  • writer
Known forResearch into Islamism

Career

Vidino was a fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center in 2009–10 and Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar at the US Institute of Peace the same year.[2] In 20110–11, he was a visiting fellow at the RAND Corporation in Washington, DC, before joining ETH Zurich.[3] He has also held fellowships at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

In 2014, he was a policy adviser at European Foundation for Democracy.[4] In June 2015, Vidino was chosen to head the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security's Program on Extremism.[5]

In 2016–17, Vidino coordinated Italy's National Commission on Jihadist Radicalization, appointed by then-prime minister Matteo Renzi.[6][7][8]

He advises the Austrian Documentation Center for Political Islam, an organization that co-published the highly disputed "Islam map",[9] an overview of locations and affiliations of more than 600 mosques and Muslim associations in Austria.

Vidino is the author of three books, a number of congressional testimonies, and frequent 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."[10]

A 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.[11]

The Bridge Initiative of Georgetown University published a comprehensive factsheet about Vidino in April 2020, claiming that his "research promotes conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and the United States".[12] 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".[13] 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 an 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."[14]

In March 2023, in an investigate report by The New Yorker, Vidino acknowledged that in 2018, he was hired by 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. Vidino also allegedly provided derogatory information to a British journalist on behalf of Alp about the Islamic Relief NGO in 2020.[15]

Publications
  • Al Qaeda in Europe: The New Battleground of International Jihad (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005)[16][17]
  • The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West[18] (2010)
  • The Muslim Brotherhood in Austria[19] (report, 2017)
  • The Closed Circle: Joining and Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (2020)

References
  1. Leiken, Robert S. (15 April 2010). Europe's Angry Muslims: The Revolt of the Second Generation. Oxford University Press. pp. 284–. ISBN 9780195328974. Retrieved 7 May 2012.
  2. USIP
  3. Lorenzo Vidino, Linkedin
  4. "Interview with EFD's Lorenzo Vidino on European Foreign Fighters".
  5. "Dr. Lorenzo Vidino – Program on Extremism – The George Washington University". cchs.gwu.edu. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
  6. GWU
  7. Letture.org
  8. Ristretti.it
  9. "Muslim groups in Austria fear attacks after government publishes map of mosques". The Washington Post. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  10. "C-SPAN: The Muslim Brotherhood". Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  11. Courtney Freer, Politics and Religion 2021
  12. Lorenzo Vidino, The Bridge Initiative
  13. twitter, 8 Feb 2023
  14. "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.
  15. Kirkpatrck, David D. (27 March 2023). "The Dirty Secrets of a Smear Campaign". The New Yorker. Retrieved 28 March 2023.
  16. Rowman & Littlefield
  17. Table of Contents – Library of Congress
  18. "The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West | Columbia University Press". Columbia University Press. Retrieved 30 September 2018.
  19. "The Muslim Brotherhood in Austria | University of Vienna" (PDF). University of Vienna. Retrieved 11 October 2022.
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