Imam Mohammad Tawhidi*
Let’s dispense with the diplomatic pleasantries. The Muslim Brotherhood is not a political party. It is not a civic movement. It is not a legitimate voice for Muslim communities anywhere on earth.
It is a century-old ideological machine built for one purpose — the seizure of power through violence, subversion and the systematic destruction of every society foolish enough to let it operate freely. It belongs behind bars, not behind podiums.
Founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan Al-Banna, the Brotherhood has spent nearly 100 years perfecting the art of political camouflage. It wears suits when it needs to, waves ballots when it must, and talks about charity and community when the cameras are rolling.
But strip away the performance, and what you find is an organisation whose intellectual DNA is soaked in blood. Al-Banna didn’t build a social club. He built a revolutionary vanguard. His successor, Sayyid Qutb, went further — declaring all of modern society in a state of jahiliyya, or pre-Islamic ignorance, and calling for violent revolution to overthrow it.
That ideology did not die with Qutb’s execution in 1966. It spread. It metastasised. And it gave birth to almost every major Islamist terrorist movement of the last half-century.
Let’s name names. Osama bin Laden – the man who murdered 3,000 people on a single September morning – was shaped by Brotherhood teachings and moved in Brotherhood circles.
Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s chief architect and ideological brain, came directly from Egypt’s Brotherhood milieu.
Hamas, the organisation that celebrates mass murder as divine duty, is formally the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is not tangentially connected to terrorism. It is the ideological mother ship.
For 90-plus years, this organisation has been linked to assassinations, riots, bombings and the deliberate destabilisation of governments from Cairo to Damascus to Amman.
It murdered Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmi Al-Nuqrashi in 1948. It spent decades plotting against Nasser, Sadat – who was eventually killed by men inspired by its worldview – and every Arab government that refused to hand it power.
Its history is not a series of isolated incidents. It is a pattern. A deliberate, consistent, generational pattern of political violence dressed up as religious obligation.
Now here is where Western governments need to be confronted with their own spectacular failure of nerve. In London, Brussels, Washington and Ottawa, Brotherhood-affiliated organisations have been welcomed into government consultations, funded by taxpayers, given platforms at universities and treated as the authentic voice of Muslim communities.
They are nothing of the sort. They are political operators exploiting Muslim identity to advance a totalitarian agenda that the overwhelming majority of ordinary Muslims want nothing to do with.
The Brotherhood does not represent Muslims. It preys on them.
The distinction matters enormously. Political Islam – the Brotherhood’s brand, the ideology of Qutb and Banna, the worldview that divides all of humanity into believers and enemies – is not Islam. It is a political project wearing religion as a uniform.
Devout Muslims around the world, hundreds of millions of them, live peacefully, love their countries, reject theocracy and despise what the Brotherhood has done to their faith’s reputation. They are the ones who suffer most when the Brotherhood moves into a neighbourhood, a mosque, a school.
They are the community that needs to be protected from this organisation, not lectured by Western liberals about the Brotherhood’s supposed legitimacy.
Brotherhood supporters in Western countries have mastered the art of screaming “Islamophobia” the moment anyone examines their ideology critically. It is a tactic, not an argument.
Criticising the Muslim Brotherhood is no more anti-Muslim than criticising the IRA is anti-Irish. These are political organisations accountable to political scrutiny, and hiding behind religious identity to deflect accountability is a con that has worked for too long.
Several countries have already understood this. Russia, Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and others have designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organisation. The United Kingdom has danced around full designation for years, paralysed by political cowardice.
The United States has debated it repeatedly without resolution — though Texas and Florida have now moved ahead of the federal government, designating CAIR, widely characterised as the Brotherhood’s US lobby. It is a start.
But it immediately raises an urgent question that Ottawa has so far refused to answer: what happens to Brotherhood-linked organisations operating freely across the Canadian border?
The answer is obvious to anyone paying attention. Canada will become the loophole — the backyard through which Brotherhood networks route their operations, fundraising and influence campaigns to circumvent American bans and regulations.
Brotherhood branches in Canada must be designated and dismantled next, or the US measures are worth considerably less than the paper they are printed on.
The hesitation on both sides of the Atlantic is not principled — it is gutless. Muslim communities in Canada deserve the same protection as those in Florida and Texas. Allowing the Brotherhood to use Canadian soil as a sanctuary is not tolerance. It is negligence.
The Muslim Brotherhood has had a hundred years. A hundred years of violence, subversion, radicalisation and suffering. A hundred years of shattered democracies, murdered reformers and communities held hostage to an ideology that hates freedom, hates pluralism and hates anyone who disagrees with it.
Enough. Designate it. Ban it. Prosecute its networks. And stop pretending that an organisation with this history, this ideology and these ambitions deserves a seat at any democratic table. The Brotherhood belongs in prison. Not parliament.
*Parliamentary adviser and research partner with TRENDS Research & Advisory