The Trump administration has announced a plan to designate various subdivisions of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists, moves that enable our government to take criminal enforcement actions and seize assets. While it’s not a sweeping designation of the Brotherhood itself, which would be legally and diplomatically fraught, the announcement is a welcome development that conveys the right message about the organization.
The Muslim Brotherhood (Jama’at al-Ikhwan al Muslimun) is the most consequential Islamist movement in modern history. Since its founding in Cairo by Hassan al-Banna in the late 1920s, it has spawned a global network of organizations, including jihadist organizations — Hamas, most notoriously — that are united in their sharia-supremacist ideology, which is virulent in its hostility to Western liberalism and its Jew hatred.
The Brotherhood has a violent history. Its “special apparatus” in Egypt murdered Prime Minister Nukrashi Pasha in 1948 and thereafter attempted to murder Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser. In 1981, splinter groups inspired by Brotherhood ideology murdered President Anwar Sadat. By 1987, abetted by Brotherhood tentacles in the United States, Hamas was established as the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. From the first intifada through the still-ongoing war in Gaza, support for the jihad against Israel — material and financial, through recruitment, rhetoric, and indoctrination — has been a top priority of Brotherhood-linked organizations throughout the world.
Many major Islamist organizations in the United States have Brotherhood roots. That undeniable fact was proven in the Bush 43–era prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The HLF was an umbrella organization for the material and rhetorical support of Hamas.
Many U.S.-based Islamist organizations were shown to have collaborative ties, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (developed out of the Muslim Students Association, which has hundreds of chapters across our country), and the North American Islamic Trust (a pivotal player in the acquisition of mosques). It is not a mystery why, after Hamas’s October 7 atrocities, there was a groundswell of pro-Hamas agitation and a surge in antisemitic incidents.
In a sense, Monday’s designation announcement is unfinished business from the first Trump administration. For years, the potential designation of the Brotherhood has been the subject of legislative proposals, led by Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas), among others.
If nothing else, the Trump announcement is a worthy corrective to the Obama administration’s delusional portrayal of the Brotherhood, in the words of then–Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, as a “largely secular” group that “has eschewed violence and decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.”
To be sure, such unabashed terrorist forces as al-Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and ISIS occasionally exhibit impatience with the Brotherhood’s Fabian, multifaceted approach to the Islamist mission — an approach that favors infiltration and co-option of a targeted society’s institutions, rather than violent attacks, especially in the West. Nevertheless, these jihadist organizations have unmistakable Brotherhood roots; and for its part, the Brotherhood leverages the threat of jihadist violence in pursuing their common agenda.
In short, there is nothing secular or moderate about the Brotherhood whose credo, to this day, remains: “Allah is our objective, the Prophet is our leader, the Quran is our law, jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
That said, the designation issue is complicated.
As it currently exists, the Brotherhood is amorphous. Technically speaking, it still has vestiges of an organizational hierarchy in Cairo — nominally, Mohammed Badie has been its “supreme guide” since 2010. But the Brotherhood’s mother ship has been decimated since 2013, when a Brotherhood regime popularly elected during the height of the “Arab Spring” uprising was driven from power by Egypt’s armed forces after massive popular protests against its repressive governance. The organization has since been outlawed in Egypt, with Badie and other leaders imprisoned. The Brotherhood, moreover, has similarly been banned in Saudi Arabia (formerly, the Brotherhood’s most important patron), the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Jordan, among other Sunni Muslim countries.
Yet, at the same time, Brotherhood satellites have embedded themselves in the political systems of various countries of importance to the United States and have at least claimed to forswear the use of force.
These countries include, most prominently, our NATO ally, Turkey, and Qatar, which has just been designated a major non-NATO ally. Both countries host U.S. military bases. Such North African governments as Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, which our government regards as allies that are cooperative in American anti-terrorism efforts, also maintain that the Brotherhood parties they tolerate are nonviolent.
Thus the dilemma: A sweeping designation of the Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization could significantly interfere in relations between our government and cooperative Muslim regimes. But ignoring the Brotherhood would fail to recognize the menace it represents and impede enforcement actions that should be taken against its abettors.
Domestically, the situation is also fraught. The fact is that many prominent Islamist organizations have Brotherhood roots. But to hold up against court challenges, State Department designations have to connect designees to terrorist activity, not just dissent. If, based on nothing more than historic Brotherhood roots, the Justice Department and Treasury took enforcement action against U.S.-based Islamist groups (many of whose members, alas, are American citizens), the result would be endless, frustrating litigation over whether these groups are complicit in violent jihad.
Consequently, the administration proposes to focus on subdivisions of the Brotherhood that have been designated as terrorist organizations, to ensure that their component entities and operatives do not evade the enforcement net. The administration also vows to collaborate with governments that are working to eliminate the Brotherhood’s capabilities and operations. Degrading the organization’s foreign platforms will promote American national security.
If we could turn back time, it would have been better to act against the Brotherhood before it established a foothold in our country 60 years ago. Eradicating it will take work. That begins with recognizing the threat. The administration has taken a good first step.