Trump Orders Designation of Muslim Brotherhood Chapters as Foreign Terrorist Groups

The president said in an interview that he would classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

Jordanian demonstrators waving green Muslim Brotherhood flags and other banners shout anti-Israel slogans during a mass rally held outside the parliament building in Amman, Jordan, in this file photo. Khalil Mazraawi/AFP via Getty Images

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump has ordered that chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood be designated as terrorist groups.

The president signed an executive order on Nov. 24 directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to start the process of classifying certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists.

The executive order, which was posted on X, states that the Muslim Brotherhood’s chapters in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon “engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests.”

The document gives examples of the Muslim Brotherhood’s support of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by the Hamas terrorist group, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Rubio and Bessent have 30 days to submit a report to Trump regarding the order.

Trump told Just the News in a Nov. 23 interview that he would designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

“It will be done in the strongest and most powerful terms,” he said. “Final documents are being drawn.”

The first Trump administration started the process of classifying the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group but did not complete it.

In August, Rubio said that designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization is “in the works,” as each chapter would have to be classified as such.

Rubio noted that there could be legal challenges to such a label.

“These things are going to be challenged in court,” he said. “Any group can say: ‘Well, I’m not really a terrorist. That organization is not a terrorist organization.’

“You have to show your work like a math problem when you go before court. All you need is one federal judge—and there are plenty—that are willing to do these nationwide injunctions and basically try to run the country from the bench. So we’ve got to be so careful.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, which is Sunni, was founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928.

The group “advocates a bottom-up, gradual Islamization of society that would eventually lead to the formation of a purely Islamic society and political entity,” according to George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain have classified the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

In the United States, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated the Muslim Brotherhood, in addition to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a terrorist organization, prohibiting the group from owning land in the state and giving the attorney general the power to sue them to shutter it.

CAIR sued Texas and said that it will “carry on its civil rights work in Texas and vigorously defend its right to do so.”

“Mr. Abbott is defaming us, and other American Muslims, because we are effective advocates for justice here and abroad,” CAIR–Texas said in a statement.

“We plan to continue exercising our constitutional rights, defending civil rights, and speaking truth to power, whether in defense of free speech, religious freedom, and racial equality here in Texas or in defense of human rights abroad.”

Jacob Burg contributed to this report.