Last week, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of the Treasury designated three branches of the Muslim Brotherhood—in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt—as terrorist entities under U.S. law. The agencies labeled the Lebanese Muslim Brotherhood as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)” and all three chapters as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs)” for their support to Hamas and involvement in violence and destabilization campaigns. The designations will activate sanctions, criminalize material support, and disrupt financial networks linked to the groups listed.
We must ban the Brotherhood now.
Treasury officials, acting under President Trump’s November 2025 executive order, asserted that these branches “purport to be legitimate civic organizations” but in fact “explicitly and enthusiastically support terrorist groups like Hamas.” Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John K. Hurley said the action was part of a sustained effort to cut off their financial and operational networks.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated, “These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence and destabilization wherever it occurs.”
Change from Approach Embraced Under Obama
The designations, which have the markings of a dramatic jumpstart for counter-terrorism efforts that ground to a halt during the Obama administration, signal a significant shift in U.S. counterterrorism policy by expanding formal terrorist labels to transnational Islamist political movements.
“Under the first Obama administration, diplomats pursued a distinct foreign policy shift, in which Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood were no longer deemed part of the threat, but embraced as counter-jihadist allies,” explained Sam Westrop, director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch program. “An accompanying domestic policy change led federal agencies to drop investigations into domestic terror financing networks without a Salafi-jihad (Al-Qaeda) connection, and to treat Muslim Brotherhood and other ‘soft’ Islamist movements as potential partners in government counter-terrorism efforts and counter-extremism programs. Indeed, taxpayers even began to fund these Islamist groups.”
American Islamists eagerly embraced this new policy, Westrop explained. “Over fifteen years later, a new generation of wealthier and politically influential domestic Islamist networks, tied to violent extremism overseas, now operates with impunity.”
Move Praised by Counter-Islamists
The designations elicited praise from Daniel Pipes, founder of the Middle East Forum and chairman of its board of directors.
“Bravo to the Trump administration,” Pipes said. “This is positive in itself and as a signal to the governments of Qatar, Türkiye, and beyond. “But three further steps must follow,” he stated.
First, because the Muslim Brotherhood poses a danger in many other countries beyond those listed, the Trump administration should designate its branches in France, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
Second, given that the Islamist threat goes far beyond terrorism and that lawful Islamism threatens Americans even more than its violent manifestation, the administration must close down organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the Muslim American Society (MAS), Pipes stated.
And lastly, because “the Muslim Brotherhood is not the most dangerous Islamist organization ... its peers, including the Barelvis, the Deobandis, Jamaat-e-Islami, and Iranian-backed Shi`is” should also be designated, Pipes concluded.
John Hajjar, co-chair of the American Mideast Coalition for Democracy, which promotes liberty, democracy, and self-determination in the Middle East is equally supportive of the designations, declaring they were “long overdue but welcome nonetheless.”
“They will have real meaning if there are consequences for the MB and its offshoots and a strong desire to prosecute these malevolent groups,” he said. “Success should be measured in growing public awareness of the threat of radical Islam.”
Trump Administration Not Alone
The Trump administration’s decision came after the Kingdom of Jordan banned the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2025 and after governors in Texas and Florida designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as terrorist organizations later in the year. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have banned the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization for years.
“Now that the United States has started to move against the Brotherhood, it will certainly affect the debate elsewhere in the West,” Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies wrote in December 2025.
Usual Suspects Offended by Policy
Predictably, the designations, which have been in the works as far back as August 2025, have generated outrage on the part of Islamists and their allies. For example, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) portrayed last week’s decision as an effort to legitimize attacks on civil society institutions in the Middle East and the U.S.
“There’s an entire industry of pro-Israel, pro-dictatorship lobbying groups in Washington who want to shut down democratic civil society movements, at home and abroad, that challenge U.S. policy in the Middle East,” said Mohammad Fadel, DAWN Non-Resident Fellow and University of Toronto Professor of Law. “These designations are in no small part designed to silence Americans advocating for an end to U.S. support for abusive regimes in the Middle East.” In 2024, DAWN which is regarded as an “unofficial agent” for Qatari interests in the United States, legitimized a terrorist attack perpetrated against Israeli civilians in the West Bank by falsely accusing Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza.
The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy—an organization closely tied to Ennhada, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia—did not condemn last week’s decision. It did, however, host a panel discussion along with the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), about the prospect of the Trump administration designating the Muslim Brotherhood’s branches in late September 2025. Predictably, speakers at the conference offered a number of explanations as to why the policy was misguided.
Shadi Hamid, a columnist at the Washington Post and a fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, drew a comparison between conservative Christians in the U.S. who have abided by the rules of civil society in the United States, with Islamists in the Middle East.
“It’s kind of ironic to see that it’s largely conservative Christians in the Republican party who are most enthusiastic about banning what are, in effect their Muslim equivalents abroad,” he said.
Such comments shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, however. In 2016, CSID lamented the ouster of “democratically elected” Egyptian president, the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi who was accused of a manifold ofhuman rights violations before his ouster.
Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, warns that policy makers must keep up the pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies in the days ahead, arguing that Islamists only become more aggressive in the face of weakness.
“[W]hen jihadists sense weakness in their enemies, they must redouble efforts to make them “feel subdued,” he said. “That’s a formula for much more, and terrifying, violence in America. We must ban the Brotherhood now.”
