Trump moves to outlaw Muslim Brotherhood in post-Gaza power play

 

The Trump administration’s push to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation marks the most aggressive revival yet of the post-9/11 “war on terror” framework — and comes at a moment when global attention has shifted from Gaza’s devastation to Washington’s internal political battles.

 

Late last month, the White House launched a process to label three Muslim Brotherhood branches — in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon — as terrorist entities. The timing is explosive. After two years of war and mass death in Gaza, critics say the move reframes the global narrative away from Israel’s conduct and back toward securitisation of Muslim political movements, both abroad and inside the United States.

 

The Brotherhood responded by defending its long-standing commitment to non-violent activism and accusing Washington of bowing to pressure from Israel, Egypt, the UAE and other authoritarian states that have spent a decade attempting to eradicate the movement. It also stressed that, during its brief period in government after the Arab Spring, it worked with Washington on stabilising the region.

 

Founded in 1928 in Egypt, the Brotherhood emerged as a grassroots reformist movement, offering social welfare, political education and moral revival in states hollowed out by colonialism and authoritarianism. Despite recurring repression — from Nasser in Egypt to Baathists in Syria — it built mass membership networks and later contested elections in Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait and, after 2011, across the Arab world.

 

During the Arab Spring, Muslim Brotherhood-aligned parties won power in Tunisia and Egypt, and gained influence elsewhere. But the 2013 coup by General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi crushed Egypt’s democratic experiment and unleashed a regional counter-revolution. From Tunisia to Bahrain, “outlawing the Brotherhood” became an all-purpose justification to dismantle civil society, shut down charities, ban protests and jail opponents.

 

Against this backdrop, Trump’s renewed designation drive seems less about evidence and more about politics. A similar UK review in 2015 found no legal basis for such a ban. Even during Trump’s first term, US national-security officials warned that the Brotherhood’s decentralised structure — spanning parties in democracies like Tunisia and Jordan — made a sweeping terrorist designation legally unworkable and diplomatically reckless.

 

This time, however, the evidentiary threshold appears to have collapsed. Trump’s announcement offered almost no factual basis — instead relying on broad insinuations and post-Gaza political momentum. Simultaneously, Republican governors — led by Texas’s Greg Abbott and Florida’s Ron DeSantis — issued state-level “terrorist” designations of the Muslim Brotherhood and even CAIR, a domestic American civil-rights group. Their legal authority to do so is highly questionable, but the political messaging is unmistakable: portray American Muslims and Muslim civil-society institutions as foreign, suspect, and linked to extremism.

 

In effect, the Gaza war has provided fuel for a familiar political project: reframing Muslim civic participation as a security threat while strengthening authoritarian allies abroad. Whether the designation survives legal challenge remains unclear. But its consequences — for US foreign policy, for Arab opposition movements, and for American Muslim communities — will be profound.

 

Key Takeaways

• Political timing: The move shifts attention from Gaza’s devastation to a revived “war on terror” narrative long favoured by Trump-aligned conservatives.

• Thin evidence: As in 2015 UK findings, the US case offers little concrete justification, relying instead on political pressure from Israel and authoritarian Arab states.

• Domestic fallout: Republican governors are using the designation to target US Muslim civil-society groups, signalling a broader crackdown on American Muslim political participation.

 

SOURCE : MIDDLE EAST EYE

 

 

 

It seems like the Muslim Brotherhood are true moderates. Perhaps they should be leading Palestine politics.