White House Considers Designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terror Group

The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) today released a new resource detailing the Muslim Brotherhood’s established ties to more than 40 radical extremists, including terrorist groups, foreign fighters and extremism propagandists. The Brotherhood officially maintains a platform of non-violence, but has supported violent terrorism across the Middle East. The Brotherhood’s long-standing aims are to use its ideology to foment violence and terror, and implement sharia within a global caliphate.

“CEP supports the Trump Administration’s efforts to act on years of evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terror organization in all but name,” said CEP CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace. “The Muslim Brotherhood has trained terrorists like Osama bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and supported other terror organizations, such as al-Qaeda, ISIS and Hamas. By designating the Brotherhood as an FTO, the administration will acknowledge the organization for what it is, and assure Americans and allies that there can be no safe harbor for those who seek to do harm.”

The Brotherhood was the proving ground for 9/11 terrorists and masterminds Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as well as the recently resurfaced ISIS caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Brotherhood’s unofficial chief ideologue, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is banned not only from the U.S., but also from the U.K. and France because of his incitement of violence against Americans, women, Jews and the LGBTQ community. Internationally designated terror group Hamas is a direct offshoot of the Brotherhood, created as the organization’s Palestinian wing.

In 2013 and 2014, the Brotherhood caused chaos in Egypt, killing soldiers, law enforcement officers and civilians in a wave of violence that continued into 2015 and 2016. As a result, the governments of Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates designated it as a terrorist organization. The Counter Extremism Project has also followed the Brotherhood’s transnational terrorist activities in Egypt, the Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Turkey, Qatar, and Sudan.

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