President Donald Trump told Just the News
on Sunday morning that he will designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a
foreign terrorist organization, striking a blow against a group long
blamed for destabilizing the Middle East and radicalizing young Muslims.
"It will be done in the strongest and most powerful terms," Trump said. "Final documents are being drawn."
The president's announcement came just days after Just the News
published a long expose on the Muslim Brotherhood's activities and
growing concerns inside the Trump administration. Trump has been
considering the move since his first administration.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist group founded nearly a
century ago in Egypt but with chapters, parties, and affiliated
movements around the world.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last week designated
the MB and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as being
“foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal
organizations.” CAIR has denied the label and sued the Texas government. According to Politico,
"CAIR says that proclamation, which bars its members from buying land
in Texas, violates its members’ constitutional property and free speech
rights."
Republicans in the House and the Senate, along with some Democrats, have been pushing the State Department to designate the Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization. Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated
in August that the designation of the MB as a foreign terrorist
organization was “in the works” but that the process was a lengthy and
careful one, including because the MB has numerous branches and
affiliates to examine individually.
A number of Middle Eastern countries have already taken action against the MB, with Egypt and Jordan banning the group and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain labeling it a terrorist organization.
The MB pushed back
against the potential terrorism label during the first Trump
administration, arguing in 2019 that “we will remain [...] steadfast in
our work in accordance with our moderate and peaceful thinking in what
we believe to be right, for honest and constructive cooperation, to
serve the communities in which we live and humanity as a whole.”
"The Muslim Brotherhood will remain stronger — through God's grace and power — than any decision,” the MB added at that time. The MB’s motto
is "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is
our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest
hope."
The Brotherhood did not respond to a request for comment sent to them through their official English language website.
Gov. Abbott of Texas revealed
on Tuesday that he had designated both the MB and CAIR as foreign
terrorist groups — something that the Trump Administration has not yet
done.
“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals
clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership
of the world.’ The actions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR to
support terrorism across the globe and subvert our laws through
violence, intimidation, and harassment are unacceptable,” Abbott said.
“Today, I designated the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as
foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal
organizations. These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and
are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”
The proclamation
by Abbott argued that the MB “provides support to localized branches in
countries and territories throughout the world, including groups that
conduct terrorism internationally” and that the activities of MB
branches have been “limited or prohibited” by other governments due to
the MB “engaging in terrorism or attempting to destabilize those
countries.”
CAIR responded by claiming they were being defamed and by
attacking Abbott. “Greg Abbott is an 'Israel First' politician who has
spent months stoking anti-Muslim hysteria to smear American Muslims
critical of the Israeli government,” CAIR’s national organization said in a press release.
“By defaming another prominent American Muslim institution
with debunked conspiracy theories and made-up quotes, Mr. Abbott has
once again shown that his top priority is advancing anti-Muslim bigotry,
not serving the people of Texas,” the group added.
Criminal investigations launched
Abbott’s office then announced on Thursday that the governor had directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to “launch criminal investigations” into CAIR and the MB.
“The goal is to identify, disrupt, and eradicate terrorist
organizations engaged in criminal activities in Texas," Abbott said. “We
will target threats of violence, intimidation, and harassment of our
citizens. We will also focus on individuals or groups who unlawfully
impose Sharia law—which violates the Texas Constitution and state
statutes."
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and other Republican Senate co-sponsors introduced a bill in July which would call for the MB to be designated as a foreign terrorist organization, or FTO.
“The Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization, and it
provides support to Muslim Brotherhood branches that are terrorist
organizations. One of those branches is Hamas, which on October 7
committed the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,
which included the murder and kidnapping of at least 53 Americans,”
Cruz said this summer.
“They are committed to the overthrow and destruction of
America and other non-Islamist governments across the world, and pose an
acute threat to American national security interests. American allies
in the Middle East and Europe have already labeled the Brotherhood a
terrorist organization, and the United States should do the same, and do
so expeditiously,” Cruz said.
Rep. Mario DÃaz-Balart, R-Fla., and Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., reintroduced the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2025 in July, arguing that it “implements a new modernized strategy for designating the global Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group.”
“The global Muslim Brotherhood has numerous regional
branches, including terrorist organizations such as Hamas, and spreads
violence and instability throughout the Middle East,” DÃaz-Balart said.
“For this reason, it is crucial to U.S. national security interests that
we prohibit U.S. dollars from enabling the Muslim Brotherhood’s
dangerous activities, and that we ensure Muslim Brotherhood members are
blocked from entering the United States.”
Moskowitz argued that “the Muslim Brotherhood has a
documented history of promoting terrorism against the United States, our
allies, and our society.”
The Brotherhood was founded by Sunni imam Hassan al-Banna
in Egypt in 1928, with the aim of establishing an Islamic state — a
caliphate — which would be governed by sharia law. Sayyid Qutb — a major
thinker for and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1940s, 1950s,
and 1960s — was an Egyptian revolutionary whose promotion of jihad is believed to have inspired more modern jihadists such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The MB helped inspire many of the terrorist offshoots which
would emerge in the ensuing decades. Egyptian Islamic Jihad — which
counted Zawahiri as one of its leaders prior to him merging his faction
with al-Qaeda — was active
in the 1970s, prior to the Soviet invasion and U.S. intervention, and
the group successfully assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in
1981. The Islamic Group was another jihadist group formed in Egypt in the 1970s. Palestinian Islamic Jihad was formed in Gaza in 1979 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and it has been active in attacking Israel ever since.
Mohamed Morsi — the leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood —
was soon elected president of Egypt after Hosni Mubarak’s February 2011
resignation. Morsi served in the role from June 2012 until July 2013.
Following large-scale protests in June 2013, the Egyptian military — led
by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi — removed Morsi from power. Sisi is the current
ruler of Egypt.
Hamas is also considered to be a branch of the MB, and other Muslim groups and organizations are closely linked to the brotherhood.
This year in March, on the anniversary of its founding, the Brotherhood released a statement
arguing that “throughout its long journey since its founding by the
martyred Imam Hassan al-Banna (may God have mercy on him), the ‘Muslim
Brotherhood’ group has given great importance to the issue of Palestine,
which has remained and will remain the central issue of the nation” and
that the MB “has defined its approach to dealing with it by mobilizing
all possible energies to support its resistance and defend its
sanctities.”
The Free Press published a story this summer on “How the Muslim Brotherhood Is Capturing Europe.” The article cited
a leaked report by the French Ministry of the Interior which concluded
that “the Brotherhood’s strategy is to install a form of ideological
hegemony by infiltrating civil society under the guise of religious and
educational activities.”
The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and
Policy — which says it is “committed to fighting antisemitism on the
battlefield of ideas” — has released multiple reports warning about the
Brotherhood.
“The Muslim Brotherhood appears to be the intellectual
inspiration behind all Islamist groups (and their jihadist offshoots)
that operate today, such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Hamas,” the institute assessed
in 2023. “Sunni jihadist groups are grounded in the firm ideological
roots that key MB ideologues pioneered in the last century.”
The institute released another report in November titled, “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Entryism into the United States.”
“This comprehensive study exposes and examines the Muslim
Brotherhood’s comprehensive, multigenerational strategic campaign to
transform Western society (especially in the United States) from within,
through what its own internal documents describe as ‘civilizational
struggle’ (jihad),” the report this month contended. “Unlike
conventional terrorist threats, this strategy exploits democratic
freedoms and institutions to advance fundamentally anti-democratic
objectives, representing a sophisticated form of nonviolent extremism
targeting Western democracies.”
The conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank released
an October report on “Patient Extremism: The Many Faces of the Muslim
Brotherhood” and argued that “a more systematic approach to the
Brotherhood is long overdue.”
“The ideas that animate Hamas are not unique; they are part
of the Brotherhood’s common heritage. These ideas have also spread far
beyond the Brotherhood, animating al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and many
other lethal organizations. The spectacular violence of al-Qaeda and the
Islamic State ensures a forceful response from the United States and
other victims,” FDD said. “At the same time, their attacks contribute to
a certain complacency regarding the Muslim Brotherhood, whose branches
in the United States and Europe reject the use of violence within their
host countries.”
The think tank added: “Yet globally, the Brotherhood is a
gateway to terrorism, infusing members with the religious doctrines and
hatred that justify violence. The most determined of these members then
form splinter groups or migrate individually to terrorist
organizations.”
FDD released a memo
this month which “maps out the funding, leadership, and history of the
Brotherhood’s activity in six countries in the Middle East and serves as
a starting point for determining which branches merit U.S. designation
under existing terrorism authorities.” FDD said their research showed
why the U.S. “should designate the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots
as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”
