The Trump Administration is considering whether to designate the Muslim Brotherhood – a movement that espouses a doctrine of political Islam and has millions of supporters across the Middle East – as a terrorist organization. But experts caution about the potential for unintended consequences, backlash, and legal challenges to such a move.
“Designating all Muslim Brotherhood groups worldwide, or even just the entire Egyptian Brotherhood, to be terrorists based on the actions of a few might well push the [Brotherhood’s internal] debate over using violence in the wrong direction,” explains Michele Dunne, Cipher Brief expert and Director and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East Center. “So it could actually increase the threat of terrorism against Americans as well as Egyptians rather than diminish it.”
Since its establishment in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood has played a pivotal role in Egyptian society as well as in the broader Middle East. The group was founded by Egyptian schoolteacher and imam, Hassan al Banna, who advocated for political, social, and educational institutions across Egypt to incorporate Islamic religious credence and principles into their everyday operations. Early on, the Brotherhood increasingly gained clout amongst the Egyptian populous, as it expanded its support base through proselytization, activism, and by providing social services.
“The Muslim Brotherhood took advantage of pre-existing Islamic organizations – politicizing them, Islamizing them, and mobilizing them,” wrote Raymond Ibrahim, Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and expert on political Islam. “Accordingly, many businesses, schools, and other organizations became attached to the Brotherhood, either formally or informally, as they continue to do to this day.”
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Sayid Qutb, an influential writer and educator, helped develop and spread the Muslim Brotherhood’s philosophy – which called for the implementation of strict Islamic law, known as sharia, as part of Middle East countries’ political systems and introduced the notion of jihad against Egypt’s secular government (although the group later renounced violence under pressure from Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat). Affiliate groups took root in Jordan, Syria, the Palestinian territories, the Arabian Gulf, and even Turkey.
But the Brotherhood is far from a unified movement. Each branch has individual aspirations. It’s offshoot in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, is focused on promoting Palestinian nationalism and combatting Israel. The Brotherhood also maintains a solid foundation in Qatar where many educational institutions profess the Brotherhood message. Additionally, several extremist groups have used Brotherhood ideology to incite attacks against the West, particularly al Qaeda, whose leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, was a former member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
Perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood’s greatest political achievement occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Arab Spring, when Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was pushed out and Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi was elected as Egypt’s President in June 2012. However, Morsi’s reign was short lived, as then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah-al Sisi orchestrated a coup in July 2013 and imprisoned Morsi and numerous other Brotherhood members and supporters. In December 2013, an interim Egyptian government, led by Adly Mahmoud Mansour, Egypt’s Chief Justice of Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, officially designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Other countries, including Bahrain, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates, have done the same.
The White House and Capitol Hill appear to be heading down the same path. U.S. President Donald Trump is considering an executive order that would direct Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to determine whether the Muslim Brotherhood should be listed as a terrorist organization. Additionally, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, recently reintroduced a bill calling for the Secretary of State to “submit a report to Congress on the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.”
The State Department's inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization would prohibit Americans from providing the movement with funds, U.S. banks from processing money its behalf, and Brotherhood members from travelling to the U.S.
Despite these efforts, the Trump Administration may face insurmountable legal challenges, particularly since questions remain over whether every Muslim Brotherhood offshoot conducts activities that directly threaten American security or the security of U.S. nationals – a requirement for terrorist group designation.
“The Brotherhood is not in a meaningful sense a single organization at all; elements of it can be designated and have been designated, and other elements certainly cannot be,” writes William McCants, Senior Fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy and director of its Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution.
“As a whole, it is simply too diffuse and diverse to characterize. And it certainly cannot be said as a whole to engage in terrorism that threatens the United States,” continues McCants.
Furthermore, a failed attempt by the Trump Administration to prove that the Muslim Brotherhood fulfills the requirements of a terrorist entity may actually embolden Brotherhood offshoots around the world at a time when they have seen their standing decline.
“If the Trump administration tries and fails to designate the Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization, it could backfire: Brotherhood organizations would likely hail this as a victory, and use a failed designation as evidence to claim – falsely – that they are nonviolent,” asserts Eric Trager, Cipher Brief expert and Esther K. Wagner Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
According to Trager, the strategy for the U.S. may just be to stay the course in the wake of the Muslim Brotherhood’s waning influence throughout the Middle East since Morsi’s ousting.
“Given the historic influence of the Egyptian Brotherhood on the broader movement, Morsi’s failure in Egypt and the subsequent collapse of the Egyptian Brotherhood has discredited the international Brotherhood movement considerably, and many Brotherhood chapters are significantly weaker than they were prior to the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings,” writes Trager.
“In this sense, most Brotherhood organizations are exactly where the Trump Administration should want them: marginalized, and more capable of spewing hatred than acting on it.”
Bennett Seftel is deputy director of editorial. Follow him on Twitter @BennettSeftel.
