Urgent: Designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization now – opinion

Western governments, including the Trump administration, need to understand that the Muslim Brotherhood’s jihadist ideology is dedicated to the West’s demise.

By Robert Williams, Gatestone Institute

Designating the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in the United States is a basic first step in countering the organization’s corrosive influence.

The MB has spread extremism, instability and terrorism from the Middle East to the rest of the world, not least in the US and Europe, with affiliates of the organization spread across at least 70 other countries.

A bill, H.R.3883 (Muslim Brotherhood Is a Terrorist Organization Act of 2025), was put forward on June 10, 2025 by US Senator Ted Cruz, “[to] require the Secretary of State to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.”

This designation is crucial for both US and international security. Even then, if the US government makes the FTO designation, this alone is not enough to slow down the aggression that the Muslim Brotherhood is still generating throughout the world.

Sadly, the Trump administration, large parts of Congress, US academia and many think tanks have been roped in by Qatar’s lavish influence-peddling to such a degree that it will take much more than adding the MB to the US government’s FTO list to undo the damage, lower the temperature of Islamist extremism and reduce the risk of international terrorism.

It will require the United States to disentangle itself from its unsavory alliance with Qatar – one which includes selling advanced military technology to the world’s greatest state sponsor of terrorist organizations, no less – and finally to face the degree to which the Muslim Brotherhood, mainly through Qatar, has infiltrated the US and the West.

According to Udi Levy, a former senior official of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, who dealt with economic warfare against terrorist organizations, “Qatar is at the top of funding terrorism worldwide, even more than Iran.”

Qatar financially and ideologically supports virtually every Islamic terrorist organization, including Hamas (itself an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood), Hezbollah, ISIS, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Qatar also runs one of the biggest lobby campaigns in the world for the Muslim Brotherhood: it started with the launch, in 1996, of Qatar’s state television, better known as Al-Jazeera, now a massive media empire and the leading MB propaganda outlet.

Al-Jazeera is regarded by several Middle Eastern leaders as an instrument wielded on behalf of Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

In 2017, Al-Jazeera was banned in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt. Recently, Israel and the Palestinian Authority banned it, as well.

So far, the Muslim Brotherhood itself has also been banned or listed as a terrorist organization in Russia, Syria, Austria and, as of this April, Jordan.

Just 30 years after the late Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, first debuted his visceral sermons of hate on the then completely unknown Al-Jazeera channel, Qatar has managed with its petrodollars to buy and influence-peddle its way straight into the heart of the political, media, academic and even entertainment establishments in the US, Europe and throughout the Middle East and South Asia.

Western governments, including the Trump administration, need to understand that the Muslim Brotherhood’s jihadist ideology is dedicated to the West’s demise, in the same way as, in the communist Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin is attributed with saying that “[t]he Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

Currently, President Donald Trump is selling the Qataris the weapons with which they and their terrorist protegees hope to destroy the US!

Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood ceaselessly broadcasts toxic messaging on Al-Jazeera in Arabic, indoctrinating another generation of young people, both in the West and in the Middle East.

The network has never experienced any serious pushback in the West for its corrosive influence, except by Israel, which was subsequently pilloried for having “no respect for freedom of the press.”

It will be difficult to destroy the deep inroads that Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood have made in the US and beyond, but it is important to realize that such an effort will only begin if the MB is finally designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization — a label long overdue — and a necessary first step to start unraveling the long infiltration of the MB into the US.

In 1991, the Muslim Brotherhood listed 29 organizations that it envisioned working toward a “grand jihad” to undermine Western civilization.

Several of the organizations mentioned in the document still operate within the United States, working actively towards America’s demise, while new ones have been formed based on the original ones: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and its various subgroups, the Muslim Students Association, American Muslims for Palestine and Students for Justice in Palestine, all of which were formed in the 1990s.

Canada appears to have been thoroughly infiltrated, according to the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy:

“An alarming report released today [June 26, 2025] by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), uncovers the deep-rooted presence and growing influence of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations across Canada’s civil, academic, political, and financial spheres. This has escalated into a significant national security concern that demands urgent and decisive attention – including formally designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Without urgent action, Canada remains vulnerable to a potential terror attack.”

As the US, Canada and the entire West remain vulnerable, the Muslim Brotherhood doubtless could not be happier. Qatar’s rulers probably cannot believe how easily its influence was bought — and how agreeably the West sold its soul for petrodollars.