Today's Edition
By: Imam Mohammad Tawhidi*
Islamist networks aren't trying to storm American institutions. They're getting elected to them.
For twenty years, American counterterrorism thinking focused on the lone attacker and the foreign cell. That focus left a blind spot.
Critics now use the term "election jihad" for a slower strategy: building community power through mosques, charities and advocacy groups, then turning that power into votes, candidates and influence over local government. Its defining feature is that it is legal.
The Muslim Brotherhood presents itself as a religious and social movement. Its record says otherwise. The movement's most influential ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, wrote the texts that inspired generations of terrorists, including al-Qaeda and ISIS.
The Brotherhood's method has always been two-track: a respectable public face for governments and the media, and an ideology that justifies violence when it's useful.
Governments that know it best have acted. Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the UAE have all designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.
In January 2026, Washington followed: the US designated the Egyptian and Jordanian branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organisations and named the Lebanese chapter as a foreign terrorist organisation, a more severe classification. The Lebanese chapter's secretary general, Muhammad Fawzi Taqqosh, received an individual SDGT designation.
Treasury made the dual strategy explicit: chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood purport to be legitimate civic organisations while, behind the scenes, they explicitly and enthusiastically support terrorist groups like Hamas. Washington described these as the first actions of an ongoing, sustained effort, with more designations to come.
This is the key point for American elections. A movement that runs terrorist wings abroad and civic fronts at home isn't a normal participant in democracy. Its electoral activity is not separate from its violence. It is the other half of the same strategy.
In May 2025, a French government report found that while the Brotherhood has lost ground in most of the Muslim world, it is gaining strength in European democracies; especially at the local level.
It described the strategy as "entryism": placing members into institutions with the intent to slowly alter their direction. French officials called the result "municipal Islamism."
The conditions that made it possible in France exist in America too: dense immigrant neighbourhoods, low-turnout local elections, and a few organisations that claim to speak for an entire community.
The fiercest fight is happening in the states. In November 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as foreign terrorist organisations, which prohibits them from purchasing or acquiring land in Texas. His proclamation goes to the heart of the electoral concern. It describes CAIR as a "successor organisation" to the Muslim Brotherhood and accuses it of seeking to spread extremist ideology by infiltrating public office.
It also names CAIR as a "co-conspirator in one of the largest successful prosecutions of terrorism financing in United States history", a reference to the Holy Land Foundation case.
In February 2026, Attorney General Ken Paxton sued to remove CAIR from the state, arguing that "the Muslim Brotherhood remains active in Texas through CAIR."
Florida went even further. In April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation establishing designations for domestic terrorist organisations that included CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Last week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has suspended operations in Florida after a federal court rejected its request to block the state's designation.
The electoral side of this debate isn't about Congress. It's about city halls, school boards and zoning committees, where a few thousand organised votes can decide the outcome.
These bodies control what children learn, which groups get public money, and what values a town's public spaces display. This is where community enclosure becomes politically useful. A network that controls the mosque board, the youth programme and the charity can hand over votes as a bloc and present itself as the only legitimate voice of its community. The people who lose out are often Muslims themselves.
Fighting the Brotherhood’s ‘Election Jihad’ must not turn into suspicion of every Muslim who runs for office. That would betray democratic principles and help the Islamists.
The answer is consistent rules:
a) Extend designations to every Brotherhood branch and front that meets the legal threshold,
b) Nonprofits active in elections should fully disclose foreign funding,
c) Apply the rules on coordination between tax-exempt groups and campaigns, and
d) Parties should talk to Muslim voters themselves instead of going through self-appointed gatekeepers
The Brotherhood plans in generations. America, Canada and Europe can stay open without being naive about who is using that openness.
*Parliamentary Adviser and Research Partner with TRENDS Research & Advisory
