Today's Edition
By Imam Mohammad Tawhidi*
The world continues to grapple with the consequences of Islamist extremism, yet one organisation, the Muslim Brotherhood, has managed to evade full accountability. The Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna in Egypt, has for nearly a century incubated the ideology and structure that inspired many of today’s terrorist movements. Its motto speaks volumes: “Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” No other “political movement” makes death its highest ambition.
The Brotherhood’s history is written in blood. In 1948, a Brotherhood assassin murdered Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud El Nokrashy Pasha. Later, the group conspired against President Gamal Abdel Nasser, prompting mass arrests. Its radical offshoot, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, went on to assassinate President Anwar Sadat in 1981 after his peace treaty with Israel.
Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood’s chief ideologue, preached global jihad and takfir (declaring other Muslims apostates). His writings directly inspired Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. While the Brotherhood now claims to reject violence, its offshoots and branches do not. Hamas, officially described in its 1988 charter as “one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine,” continues to act as its most militant arm.
In the United States, the danger is not theoretical; it’s documented. The 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial exposed how the largest Muslim charity in America funnelled $12 million to Hamas. Seized documents included the Brotherhood’s 1991 “Explanatory Memorandum,” outlining a “civilisation-jihadist process” to “make Islamism the dominant force in America.”
The memo instructed that the Ikhwan’s work “is a kind of grand Jihad… eliminating and destroying Western civilisation from within.”
The Brotherhood now operates in more than 70 countries. Egypt banned it in 2013 after the disastrous year of Mohamed Morsi’s rule, followed by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Syria, and Russia in 2014, citing its role in fueling bombings, coups and sectarian unrest. These nations understand what Washington still hesitates to admit: the Brotherhood is the ideological incubator of terrorism.
Legislation introduced by Senator Ted Cruz and Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart and Jared Moskowitz in 2025 urges Secretary of State Marco Rubio to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Designation would make material support a prosecutable offence, freeze assets, restrict travel, and strip tax-exempt status from front organisations; measures that once crippled al-Qaeda’s networks.
Some warn this could alienate the “moderates,” but “moderation cannot coexist with a creed that openly rejects democracy and sanctifies martyrdom. Morsi’s short-lived rule proved the point: mass arrests, church burnings, and assaults on minorities.
It is time to end the double standard. The Muslim Brotherhood is not a reformist movement but the ideological backbone of global jihad. Designating it an FTO would send a clear message: America will no longer tolerate networks that exploit democracy to destroy it.
The West’s security and its moral clarity depend on calling the Brotherhood what it truly is: a terror organisation hiding behind religion.
*The writer is a Parliamentary Advisor
