Following the U.S. government's long-delayed decision on designating the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated networks as terrorist organizations, the Lebanese branch is now a Foreign Terrorist Organization, while the Egyptian and Jordanian branches are Specially Designated Global Terrorists, and the relevant sanctions have been implemented. Just recently, the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood was also added as a Special Designated Global Terrorist, with the "intent to designate" it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
Yet in two of these three countries, the Muslim Brotherhood is in any case banned – in Egypt since 2013 and in Jordan since April 2025 – as it is across the Arab and Muslim world: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Syria, and, to some extent, Libya.
The U.S. move also appears to have prompted recent action across the West: In January 2026, Argentina declared the Lebanese, Egyptian, and Jordanian chapters terrorist. This month, the Dutch parliament approved a motion to ban the organization, and is now exploring how it can ban terrorist organizations more quickly. An Irish MP criticized the fact that the Brotherhood is not "the subject of a suppression order" in the Republic of Ireland. She added that "this is in stark contrast to the action taken by the U.S. Department of State" and called the Muslim Brotherhood "a lethal organization determined to cast the net of its poisonous ideological extremism as far as possible into the heart of Western democracies." Prior to the U.S. move, Austria had banned the Brotherhood under 2021 anti-terrorism legislation; besides that, one city in Germany banned a single Brotherhood-affiliated organization in 2024 and France closed some mosques that support its ideology.
The Muslim Brotherhood threat was underlined in the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, released this month. It stated: "The spread of Islamist ideology – in some cases led by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who have provided financial and other forms of material support to terrorist groups such as HAMAS and Hizballah – poses a fundamental threat to freedom and foundational principles that underpin Western Civilization. Violent networks, including supporters of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, often use appeals to Islamist identities and ideology to fuel recruiting and financial support for terrorist groups and individuals around the world. At the extreme end are groups that endorse the violent imposition of Sharia in governance, directly undermining fundamental Western freedoms of speech and religion, with the ultimate aim of establishing an Islamist caliphate. There are growing examples of this in various European countries such as Austria, Germany, and the UK. The designation of Muslim Brotherhood chapters that fund and promote violence as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) is a mechanism to secure Americans against this threat."
The Brotherhood, whose ideology underpins and inspires terrorist organizations and leaders from Al-Qaeda to ISIS to Hamas, is not banned by the U.S. in Qatar or in Turkey. These are its global centers; its operations are run primarily from Istanbul and Doha via numerous organizations all over the world. Its official website presents its history along with press releases and historical information, but the U.S.-based Cloudflare blocks details about where the website is hosted and who owns it. President Trump's designation leaves the issue of these two countries unaddressed, and allows the Muslim Brotherhood to continue to function.
In order to understand the threat of the Brotherhood in the U.S., we must understand its modus operandi: In the U.S., the Brotherhood exploits uniquely American vulnerabilities – among them First Amendment protections and an open nonprofit and civil-society infrastructure that allow its aligned organizations to operate legally. It pursues its strategy of Islamizing the West through legal frameworks such as charities, universities and educational bodies, religious organizations, advocacy groups, political activity, and media platforms – and it is continuing to gain ground thanks to massive Qatari funding.
Critics who point this out face lawfare, attacks on their reputations, and pressure. The Brotherhood's defenders portray it as a moderate religious movement devoted to social reform – but it must be remembered who these defenders actually are and why they are supporting a terrorist organization.
The Muslim Brotherhood's ultimate goal, expressed by the organization itself in the "Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Group in North America," a document entered as evidence in federal court, is achieving global Islamic dominance via "grand jihad" for "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within." The Memorandum is part of a wealth of documents seized in a 2004 FBI raid in Virginia that has been described as "the archives of the Muslim Brotherhood in America."
While the organization has long denied that the Memorandum and the plan were real, its existence was recently acknowledged in a lecture at the Islamic Association of Raleigh in North Carolina. Muslim Brotherhood supporters in the West work hard to shield these views from scrutiny and to obscure the movement's ultimate objectives. But they are backed by equally explicit statements, by Brotherhood leaders.
Further proof of this plan is the PowerPoint presentation by Muslim Brotherhood leader Tareq Al-Suwaidan. Titled "Change Project – Towards the New Islamic Civilization – Ideas for Today and Tomorrow," the "project," which was published in 2011, is now in what he calls "Phase 4 (2025-2030)" – five years short of projected completion. It stresses that "today, we are far" from Islam's previous "position of leadership in almost all aspects of civilization" and that "it is obvious that we need to change and regain our position."
Defining the need for "military strength" for Muslims, it underlines the "number of nuclear warheads" as a vital part of "the process of transitioning from today's reality to the desired future vision." Al-Suwaidan himself has emphasized his focus on radicalizing Muslim youth in the West who, he says, have the dual power of Islamic identity alongside Western citizenship and professional training and can lead "the rise of the East" and the spread of Islam.
Over the past three decades, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has documented and translated hundreds of sermons, speeches, writings, and official texts by Brotherhood leaders and senior figures, constituting a massive archive exposing the organization's open embrace of jihad and predictions of the destruction of the U.S. It is only through these systematic translations, documentation, and analysis that the Brotherhood's true goals, methods, and global coordination have been brought into the open.
Muhammad Badie, the Brotherhood's General Guide who has been imprisoned in Egypt since 2017, has repeatedly declared jihad to be the only path forward, urging the raising of "a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life." He also sets out the Brotherhood's long-term objective: establishing a "rightly guided Caliphate" that would achieve global "mastership." In sermons, Badie calls the U.S. a "Zio-American" enemy of Islam, proclaiming that America is "heading toward its demise" and that it will be destroyed.
These views are not unique to Badie. His predecessor, Muhammad Mahdi Othman 'Akef, similarly predicted that Islam would "invade Europe and America," also expressing confidence that the U.S. was "heading toward its demise." Such statements reflect the organization's own stated objectives, articulated repeatedly by its most senior leadership.
The U.S.'s designation and sanctioning of three overseas branches of the Muslim Brotherhood may be a start – but only if it continues to deal with the serious, multifaceted threat and vital security concern it poses not only to the U.S. but to all Western democracies, using all legal means to protect against it. The Trump administration should next examine Brotherhood operations inside the U.S., demand transparency from affiliated U.S.-based Islamist organizations, and apply foreign influence laws. Instead of granting legitimacy to Brotherhood-aligned groups and activists posing as champions of civil rights, policymakers must expose the movement's ideological goals and deny these networks the access that has allowed them to entrench themselves so deeply in American higher education and other institutions.
Steven Stalinsky Ph.D. is the Executive Director at MEMRI
Originally posted at MEMRI.
