OPINION — The White House this past November issued a presidential action statement designating certain Muslim Brotherhood “chapters” as terrorist organizations. On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department and U.S. Treasury Department announced the designations of the Lebanese, Jordanian, and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations. The Egyptian and Jordanian chapters received a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) designation.The Lebanese chapter received both the SDGT designation and a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designation.
In the spring of 2019, Washington, responding to mounting pressure by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, decided to brand the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) a terrorist organization. there was no mention of “chapters” outside Egypt.
Having followed the MB and interviewed many of its members for years during my government service, I published an article in 2019 questioning the underlying assumptions of the plan. This article is a revised version of my 2019 piece.
I argued in the 2019 piece that the administration’s decision at the time did not reflect a deep knowledge of the origins of the Muslim Brotherhood and its connection to Muslim societies and political Islam.
In the fall of 2025, the leaders of the United Arab Republic, Jordan, Bahrain, and Lebanon pressured the administration to label the MB a terrorist group.
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Context
the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood was founded by schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928 in response to two fundamental realities: First, Egypt was under the influence of British colonialism embodied in the massive British military presence near the Suez Canal. Second, under the influence of the pro-Western corrupt monarchy lead first by King Fuad and later by his son King Faruk, the MB’s founder believed that Muslim Egypt was drifting away from Islam. Egypt of course is the home of Al-azhar University, the oldest Muslim academic center of learning in the world.
In addition, al-Azhar University represents the philosophical and theological thought of the three major Schools of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam—the Hanafi, the Maliki, and the Shafi’i Schools.The fourth and smallest School of Jurisprudence—the Hanbali—is embodied in the Wahhabi-Salafi doctrine and is prevalent in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Banna’s two founding principles were: a) Islam is the solution to society’s ills (“Islam hua al-Hal”), and b) Islam is a combination of Faith (Din), Society (Dunya) and State (Dawla). He believed, correctly generally speaking, that these principles, especially the three Arabic Ds, underpin all Sunni Muslim societies, other than perhaps the adherents of the Hanbali School.
In the past 98 years,the Muslim Brotherhood has undergone different reiterations from eschewing politics to accepting