Excerpt:
The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that has long held a disputed position in Middle Eastern politics, is now a focus of controversy in the United States.
Known in Arabic as the Ikhwan and founded nearly a century ago in Egypt, it advocates the application of Islamic principles in public life. The movement has so far pushed that agenda only in Muslim-majority countries, but some critics now claim — without evidence — that it is doing the same in the United States.
Harshly repressed by many governments in the region, the movement was popular among university students in the Middle East in the 1960s and 1970s — and when some of those activists immigrated to the United States with student visas, they brought their Muslim Brotherhood ideology with them.