President Donald Trump ordered his administration to study labelling some parts of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations, a step toward fulfilling his longtime goal of slapping the designation on the broader group.
In an executive order signed Monday, Trump ordered Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to study whether Brotherhood chapters, including those in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, deserved the designation.
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The order made specific mention of chapters in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. Notably, this has been long-standing demand by Trump’s MAGA base. The order by Trump said, “Those chapters engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilisation campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests.”
US designation as a foreign “terrorist” group allows Washington to take punitive measures such as freezing any assets the group might have in the United States and denying entry to group members, according to AFP. Now, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will complete the process of outlawing the branches named in the US president’s order.
Praising the move, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said, “The Muslim Brotherhood is an organisation that threatens stability throughout the Middle East and beyond. Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon in a post to X wrote, “This is an important decision not only for the State of Israel but also for neighboring Arab countries that have suffered from Muslim Brotherhood terrorism for decades.”
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Earlier in May, French President Emmanuel Macron ordered his government to draw up proposals to counter the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and its spread there. The Muslim Brotherhood is already outlawed as a terrorist group in some countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. More recently, Jordan banned it in April of this year.
What is the Muslim Brotherhood?
The Muslim Brotherhood is termed as the oldest political Islamist organisation in the Arab world. It was founded in Egypt in 1928 by and Islamic scholar and teacher by the name of Hassan al-Banna. AFP reported that al-Banna believed that reviving Islamic principles in society could enable the Muslim world to resist Western colonialism. The supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is Mohamed Badie, who is currently in prison.