University of Friborg. MSA logo. Instagram illustration of MSA Friborg. image: watson
This Saturday in Bern will take place the first football tournament bringing together MSA, the Muslim Students Associations. Described as conservatives and trivializing the veil of women, who are they, where do they come from? Investigation.
01.05.2025, 18:4801.05.2025, 18:59
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The event is announced as a first. This Saturday, May 3, a football tournament bringing together eight Muslim student associations in Switzerland will take place in Bern. Teams of boys and girls will compete in separate competitions. This sporting event will be held under the banner of Muslim Students Association (MSA).
In Switzerland, seven universities (Zurich, Basel, Berne, Saint-Gall, Lucerne, Lausanne and Friborg) have a student association bearing MSA. This is not the case of the Muslim Association of Students of the University of Geneva (Ameug), which will however participate in the Bern tournament.
MSA in the United States and Canada
Other Muslim student associations in the world are MSA. This is the case in the United States and Canada, where the MSA, the first name, was created in 1963 by members in exile from the Islamist and fundamentalist brotherhood of the Muslim Brotherhood fleeing the repression of the Arab nationalist regimes.
As it indicates on its site, the MSA United States and Canada has assigned itself the following “mission”:
“Search for the blessing of Allah by allowing Muslim students to strengthen their faith by activism on campuses and by the Da`wa (preaching), in order to develop a unified vision (of Islam).”
MSA United States and Canada
In the Netherlands too
The MSA United States and Canada is also aimed at“Enter the Din (religion) all associations of Muslim students” And to ensure that these, men and women, “continue to serve the Ummah (the community of believers) after obtaining their diploma”.
There is an MSA in the Netherlands as well, as written by the Director of the Research Program on Extremism at the American University George-Washington, Lorenzo Vidinoin his book The Muslim Brotherhood’s Pan-European Structuredevoted to the establishment of the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe.
On its site, the MSA Netherlands presents itself as “the umbrella association of 18 associations of student Islamic inspiration”. “His main task,” she writes, “is to unite, strengthen and represent its members at the national level. Its objective is to create a strong and proud community of Dutch Muslim students who have a significant and precious impact on Dutch society. ”
In 2020, the MSA Netherlands was awarded the Robert-Schuman Prize for Femysto-Robert Schuman is one of the fathers of European construction. The FemySo is the forum of young European Muslim and Muslim students. This association, described as close to the Muslim Brotherhood, but it defends itself from this accusation, was and is perhaps still a privileged interlocutor of the European Commission and the Council of Europe.
A pro-Voile European campaign that caused a scandal
In 2021, the Femyso, which intended to work for the “integration of Muslims in Europe” and fight against “Islamophobia”, had taken part in an Islamic pro-Voile campaign, relayed by European institutions. “Beauty is in diversity as freedom in hijab”, “Bring joy, accept the hijab”proclaimed two of his slogans. Faced with the scandal caused by this campaign, the European institutions had withdrawn their sponsorship.
-In 2022, The point revealed that the Femyso had asked money in 2016 to the para-state NGO Qatar Charity as part of a real estate project, the project that is not actually carrying out. Quoted by the French weekly, Lorenzo Vidino then said:
“That the femy is asking for huge sums of money from Qatar Charity is really problematic. This clearly shows that his project is not to improve human rights, but to strengthen the religious character of young European Muslims. ”
On its site, the FemySo says it has 32 members from 22 European countries. None of the members listed is Swiss.
No known site but a logo
The MSA Switzerland logo.
In Switzerland, MSA Muslim student associations do not seem to have a dedicated website, but they have a logo, which includes a university degree, the Muslim crescent and an evocation of the Alps. Each of these associations has an Instagram account. We asked the organization of the Bern Tournament by e-mail if the Swiss MSA had links or was in one way or another of the MSA United States and Canada. We have not obtained an answer for the time being.
These organizations grouped under the name MSA constitute to date and to our knowledge the only Muslim associative offer in the aforementioned Swiss universities. Their Instagram publications are reported, among other things, by a female iconography marked by the omnipresence of the veil, the Ameug, in Geneva, not escaping at this bias.
«Sister – The Field is Yours!»
Dated April 16, an Instagram publication of the MSA of the University of Friborg dedicated to the practice of football abounds in this representation. She encourages Muslim students to register for the “Swiss Msas Sisters Cup 2025”: “Sister – The Field is yourself!” (Sister – The terrain is yours!), Claims a poster showing in a posture full of a young veiled woman dressed in black. We think of the hijabeuse movement, these veiled footballers prohibited from official competitions in France.
“It is not very complicated to decipher this image,” reacts the Suisso-Tunisian Saïda Keller-Messahli, author of the investigation Switzerland, hub for Islamism: a glance behind the scenes of the mosques (Alphil editions). She develops:
“In this image, we are supposed to understand that no activity is prohibited for Muslim women, except that the Muslim woman must be veiled. Indeed, the Islamists make the veil an argument of alleged modesty, in order not to arouse lubricate thoughts in humans, the only justification of the veil, any other reason being a deception. “
Saïda Keller-Messahli
In a video dating from ten years ago, the Moroccan Islamist preacher born in France Hassan Iquioussen, who was a long time a close friend of Hani Ramadan, the director of the Islamic Center in Geneva founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, gave the veil the name of “Islamic outfit”.
As we can see on their Instagram accounts, MSA Swiss student associations encourage good behavior, multiply charitable actions, organize leisure outings, invite piety and call for donations to help the Gaza population. No call to violence.
“This Islam wants to establish itself as the only Islam”
“Their Islam is nonetheless fundamentalist and political,” retorts Saida Keller-Messahli. “Giving a good image is essential with regard to the non-Muslim public, but religious doctrine is rigorous. Above all, by investing universities, where the cultural battle is played out, this Islam intends to establish itself as the only possible interlocutor with the authorities and as the only practice allegedly in accordance with Islam with young people. “
The atmosphere will certainly be relaxed and celebrated this Saturday in Bern at the MSA tournament of student associations, the Ameug understood. The very political question of the dissemination, in Swiss universities, of a conservative and identity vision of Islam, implicitly advocating the watches of women, when other currents of Islam for the time very minority are proposing to emancipate from doctrinal rigidity, remains whole.
