by Mathilda Heller
"If you ban the ideology, it's like suffocating, it's like cutting oxygen from all the factions that are aligning with this ideology or working within the ecosystem," said Dalia Ziada
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"If we cut off the Muslim Brotherhood, eventually all its offshoots, whether they are individuals or groups, will lose their oxygen and stop working," Dalia Ziada, Washington Coordinator and Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
The interview followed US President Donald Trump's announcement that he plans to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and that the final documents pertaining to this are being drawn up.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational Sunni Islamist movement with a reach that extends across the globe. Its Palestinian branch - Hamas - is already designated as a terrorist organization in the US, but until now, the 'mothership' organization has not been proscribed.
Trump's announcement was met with significant praise, not least from ISGAP itself which commended the fact that the "threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology is now being taken seriously."
It also came somewhat as a surprise. Ziada said IS]GAP "did not expect it" despite having pushed for it for a long time. Just last week, Ziada and her colleague Haras Rafiq released a near-300 page report on the subject.
Why has the Muslim Brotherhood not yet been proscribed?
The first question posed to Ziada was regarding why the US's move to designate the Muslim Brotherhood has taken so long. The movement will be celebrating its 100 year anniversary in 2028, so it is not a new organization, and extensive research has been done on its terror activities and influence. Additionally, it has already been designated in multiple countries, notably Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt.According to Ziada, the reason for the delay is the Muslim Brotherhood's use of "civilizational jihad" in the West. She describes this as a strategy developed over 40 years ago which involves sabotaging Western civilization from within, "making a kind of a soft coup on all the liberal values that the United States represents and the Western world represents."
The soft power campaigning allows the Muslim Brotherhood to manipulate the system in their favor without actually being exposed or identified, she explained.
"They learned how to manipulate the legal system, the academic system, even the government system, and present themselves as authentic voices on behalf of all Muslims to policymakers and also, most importantly, manipulate the media narrative."
"As a result, we ended up having a huge network of the Muslim Brotherhood in Western countries that work on several levels, civil society, policy, government and academic and so on, without us as the audience being able to identify the links between them."
The difficulty with the Muslim Brotherhood has been connecting the dots and making links between its different forms.
This became somewhat smoother after Hamas's massacre on October 7, 2023, which Ziada calls a "game changer."
Why? "Because for the first time, it showed us the real ugly face of the Muslim Brotherhood, one that was not shy to practice antisemitism, violence and also to practice hate towards America. We saw burning the American flag, screaming death to America by the protesters."
"They showed us the real face for the first time, thinking that it is acceptable as long as it is framed as a reaction to a humanitarian situation in Gaza."
Mutations and reincarnations of the MB
Another change in the last two years was that researchers - especially the Muslim Brotherhood team at ISGAP - were able to identify for the first time the link between the activities of Hamas and the activities of other networks of the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, the UK and the US. This, perhaps, served as a tool for the administration to finally identify who the Muslim Brotherhood are.The Muslim Brotherhood is not a monolith, instead operating in secret systems within a larger ecosystem.
Ziada explained that it does this on purpose in order to not be held accountable as a group for its actions: "a mechanism of survival."
So given its chameleon-like status, what is to stop the Muslim Brotherhood from changing its name and aesthetic and rebranding as something new (thus circumventing the designation)?
For Ziada, the answer lies in the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is being designated as an ideology, not just a singular group.
"If you designate one organization, let's say, designate CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the same people who are doing CAIR will start a new organization with a new name, and it will be perfectly legal and working within the legal system."
"But this mutation or reincarnation is happening only if you designate factions. This new plan for designation [of MB] is that they are not targeting Islamists, but they are targeting Islamism. If you designate the Muslim Brotherhood, you are designating the ideology itself. And if you ban the ideology, it's like suffocating, it's like cutting oxygen from all the factions that are aligning with this ideology or working within the ecosystem of this ideology. And this will eventually lead them to lose their oxygen and stop working."
"I believe if it is done the right way, it will work wonders," she added.
Nevertheless, one must remain careful to not make the war on the Muslim Brotherhood a war on mainstream Muslims, she added. "The US must be careful not to cross this line."
However, the MB has huge sway over the general Muslim populace, partly due to the fact that it is incredibly coordinated.
"The only Islamic group that is organized in Western countries is the Muslim Brotherhood," said Ziada. "They are the ones who own the mosques, who run Islamic schools and Islamic centers."
"This radical Islamist group has been hijacking their voice for so long and they have been weaponizing the voices of Muslim communities in Western countries to destroy the democratic system."
Reports over the last few months have shed light on the sheer number of Islamic centers with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood across the West, especially France. "We're speaking about a huge network of thousands of Islamic centers, hundreds of schools and, and mosques, and that's just in the US," added Ziada.
The void left after the collapse of MB
Without the organizing prowess of the MB, what may happen in the void left behind? The Post raised with Ziada the fact that the two prongs of Islamist influence in the West - both which use soft power and cultural hijacking - are the MB and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Could the diminishing of the MB create an opportunity for Iran?"There will definitely be a void and there will be a gap where ordinary Muslims, whether they are Sunni or Shia, will lose orientation for a second until an alternative is provided."
"As well as banning the Muslim Brotherhood and ending their activities, we have to provide an alternative to local Muslims, local Muslim communities in Western countries so other extremists [don't get a foothold]."
Such a threat could not only come from Iran, but also the Salafists, she explained, an ideological group which is "even more far right" than the MB and which is already very active in Western capitals, most notably the UK.
Ziada noted that when the MB were removed from Egypt, the Salafists entered that gap, and are now "getting more powerful day by day."
The designation may also lead to changes in the Middle East, forcing two of the MB's biggest supporters - Qatar and Türkiye - to choose between the terrorist group or their relations with the US.
"Qatar in particular actually has a very tough choice to make," opined Ziada. "Either to continue supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and funding them, sponsoring them, whitewashing their reputation in their media outlets like Al Jazeera and so, and promoting their ideology and narrative, which actually risks their relationship with the United States, especially the newly found security partnership with the United States. The other option is to choose the United States to open a new page from the Western world and from its neighbours in the region, including Arab countries and including Israel, and just get rid of this ideology. The same applies to Turkey."
Qatar and Türkiye have also been very influential in clouding international public opinion against Israel, and promoting Hamas and the Palestinian cause.
Effect on anti-Israelism
The Post asked Ziada whether the banning of the MB could help to lessen the anti-Israel rhetoric in the US at the very least."For sure. For so long they have been infiltrating the policy making system and they had their representatives either directly affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood or aligned with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood exist in very crucial decision making circles inside the United States and other Western capitals. We saw how coordinated they were in pushing against Israel. They normalized antisemitism not even, not only on the public level but on, on the government's level."
"And at the same time they used Islamophobia as a shield, making it socially and politically costly on anyone who uses it, while at the same time normalizing antisemitism and making it an acceptable practice under the flag of the war in Gaza, under the flag of Israeli policies."
A lot of this has involved radicalizing American youth, especially in academic spheres.
"This is one of the instructions of people like Yusuf Al Qaradawi, one of the main ideologues of the MB, who instructed his followers to use Palestine or the Palestinian cause as a glue to bring Muslim communities together and also create alliances with non Muslims in Western communities."
Sadly, they have been very successful," she added.
Nevertheless, "targeting the holistic ecosystem of the Muslim Brotherhood promises real change," she said. "We are now targeting Islamism, not Islamists. We are targeting the ideology and suffocating or making it, or cutting its oxygen, cutting it as an oxygen to these Islamists, whether they are politicians or organizations."
"They will already automatically die after we kill the main ideology, the main ecosystem, the main holistic thing that is called the Muslim Brotherhood," she concluded, with optimism.
Mathilda Heller
Source: https://www.jpost.com/international/islamic-terrorism/article-875088
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