A significant group of individuals, groups or institutions in Western Europe are today described as belonging to the “Muslim Brothers” or being “close” to them. An examination of these actors, their networks, activities and discourses rapidly makes apparent that, while they share to a large degree the same lineage, their profiles have diversified over time and today often diverge considerably. Taking the case of the Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF), created in 1983, this paper seeks to inquire into the analytical usefulness of the category “Muslim Brother” in the contemporary context of France. The UOIF emerged out of a long process of divisions and mergers between Muslim associations in the French immigrant student milieus of the 1970s and 1980s. Activists from the Tunisian Harakat al-ittijah al-islami (later Harakat al-Nahda) and from the Lebanese Al-Jama’at al-Islamiya were particularly influential at the time of the setup of the organization in the 1980s. Today Moroccan activists are very influential in the upper echelons of the Union’s leadership. Through their close relationship to Yusuf al-Qaradawi and their membership in the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe the UOIF is part of an Arabic-speaking transnational space which links Europe to the Middle East and North Africa. While this transnational network is often referred to in order to substantiate the characterization of the UOIF as ‘Ikhwani’, less attention is paid to studying how the discourses circulating inside this network and its various activities relate to the UOIF’s work inside France. In fact, in the course of the past two decades, the UOIF has become deeply embedded in the social space of the French Republic. Through the creation of a structure of affiliated groups and institutions, whose number is unequalled among French Islamic Federations, through its significant presence in youth milieus, and, last but not least, its close cooperation with State authorities as a representative of France’s mosque associations, the UOIF’s activities have become entwined in complex ways with French society and contribute to reconfigure it. Based on interviews with UOIF activists and the analysis of Islamic media, this paper will outline the complex (trans)national spatial configuration inside which the UOIF functions and examine the relevance, both as discursive and material ressource and as a source of internal and external problems, of the Muslim Brothers’ tradition for the work of the UOIF.